Department of Political Science Bulletin, October 5, 2020
Today’s bulletin is also posted on our website: http://www.polisci.washington.edu/Alumni/Newsletter/newsletter.html
WELCOME TO AUTUMN QUARTER 2020
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
The Political Science main office has moved online and staff have been teleworking since March 9, 2020. Please email polisci@uw.edu for general information. Some University buildings, including Gowen and Smith Hall, are open for in-class courses for Autumn Quarter. Gowen and Smith Hall hours are: Monday through Friday, 7am-7pm; closed weekends and holidays.
Political Science’s Health & Safety Plan is located on our website for your review. Instructors and Teaching assistants should review “Instructor Information”.
Political Science COVID-19 Prevention Plan is also located on our website. If you come to campus, you are required to review the plan and take the UW General COVID-19 safety training. You must fill out the COVID-19 attestation in Workday on each day you come to campus.
FACULTY GOING ON LEAVE FOR 2020–2021 ACADEMIC YEAR:
- James Long (Autumn only)
- Jamie Mayerfeld (all year)
FACULTY RETURNING FROM LEAVE STATUS:
- Megan Francis
- Elizabeth Kier
- Jonathan Mercer
GRADUATE STUDENT ADVANCEMENTS
Congratulations to the following graduate students:
Spring 2020
Masters: Kenya Amano, Morgan Wack, Nicolas Wittstock, Dennis Young
Final: Sean Butorac, Kylie Clay, Amanda Fulmer, Emma Rodman, Stephen Winkler, Anna Zelenz
Summer 2020
Masters: Rachel Castellano, Megan Erickson, Shihao Han
Final: Kevin Aslett, Will Gochberg, Stephanie Stanley
NEW GRADUATE STUDENTS
Please welcome the following new graduate students:
Jihyeon Bae, Meagan Carmack, Lauren Collins, Jana Foxe, Rachel Fordham, Joshua Gilmore, Ramses Llobet, Becca Peach, Jessica Sciarone, Yulenni Venegas Lopez, Siyu Yin, Lanyi Zhu
GRADUATE STUDENT POSITIONS
Lead TA: Jonathan Beck
Writing Center Director: Carolyn Dapper
POLITICAL SCIENCE STAFF
Meera Roy, Director of Academic Services, Smith 215B, 543-9456 Susanne Recordon, Graduate Program Assistant, Smith 215D, 543-1898 Tamara Sollinger, Academic Counselor, Smith 215C, 543-1824
Mark Weitzenkamp, Academic Counselor, Smith 215, 543-1824
Stephen Dunne, Senior Computer Specialist, Smith 220C, 616-3896
Andrew Hedden, Associate Director, Center for Labor Studies, Smith M266/268, 543-7946 Yasmin Ahmed, Assistant Director of Student and Community Engagement, 543-7537 Ling Fu, Fiscal Analyst, Gowen 123, 543-8189
Ann Buscherfeld, Administrator, Gowen 107, 543-2783
FACULTY ADMINISTRATIVE APPOINTMENTS
John Wilkerson, Chair, Gowen 106. To set up an appointment, e-mail him at jwilker@uw.edu.
Mark Smith, Associate Chair
Mark Smith, Undergraduate Program Committee Chair
Becca Thorpe, Graduate Program Committee Chair and Graduate Financial Aid Committee Chair
Chris Adolph, Graduate Admissions Committee Chair
Aseem Prakash, Graduate Placement Director
POLITICAL ECONOMY FORUM ANNOUNCEMENT
James Long, Victor Menaldo and Rachel Heath (Economics) would like to formally announce the Forum's new website, which was launched this summer with the help of this year's Wesley Fellow in Political Economy, Nicolas Wittstock.
We are still building and posting new content to the website, but would like to draw your attention now to two new podcast series we've recently launched.
The first is the PE Forum podcast, where we have rotating guests from among our faculty and graduate students discussing a variety of political economy topics, including most recently on Populism vs. Liberal Democracy, Science and Evidence-Based Policymaking, and Free Speech. Guests have included Victor Menaldo, Rachel Heath, Jamie Mayerfeld, Susan Whiting, Mark Smith, Brian Leung, Beatrice Magistro, Nicolas Wittstock, James Long, and others. You can find the full list of topics/recordings on our Soundcloud. **We invite professors and graduate students to submit topics or ideas for podcasts -- including on any recently published work, working papers, op-eds from yourself or others, or just general interest topics that strike your fancy and any guests you would want to invite -- to Nicolas Wittstock or Morgan Wack, our podcast producers, CCed here. **
The second podcast is a new "series within a series" that I will host called "Neither Free Nor Fair? Election Security and the Fate of Democracy in the 21st Century." You can listen to a teaser trailer here, and we posted our first episode on September 28th, with Susan Hyde from UC-Berkeley, on Democratic Backsliding in the International Environment. We have a Soundcloud playlist for that series here, and will post new episodes once or twice a week over the coming months.
FACULTY AND GRADUATE STUDENTS PAPERS, PUBLICATIONS AND ACTIVITIES
Megan Ming Francis
- Was quoted at length in a Seattle Times front-page story about BLM protests: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/how-centuries-of-racism-plus-a-pandemic-led-to- an-extraordinary-moment-of-protest/
- Her TEDx talk was promoted to the national TED Talk page because she gave an entire lecture about racial violence (and clearly people still do not
understand): https://www.ted.com/talks/megan_ming_francis_we_need_to_address_the_real
_roots_of_racial_violence?utm_term=social- justice&utm_campaign=social&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=t.co&utm_content=video
- Curated a reading list about Defunding the Police and Prison Abolition for Pocket/Mozilla: https://blog.getpocket.com/2020/06/reimagining-justice-a-primer-on- defunding-the-police-and-prison-abolition/
- Wrote an article for The Washington
Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/15/white-press-has-history- endangering-black-lives-going-back-century/
Scott Lemieux
- September 21, gave virtual lecture at the Sunset Club, "The Electoral College: Its Historical Origins and Contemporary Relevance"
- September 23, spoke with the Political Science Honors Club at Texas Christian University about Donald Trump's replacement of Ruth Bader Ginsburg
- September 26, spoke with KING news about the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett
- Published article at NBC News: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-mcconnell-s- supreme-court-plan-justifies-anything-democrats-do-ncna1240575
- Published articles at The Week:
Beatrice Magistro has been selected to receive the Graduate School Presidential Dissertation Fellowship.
Aseem Prakash has been chosen as this year’s recipient of the Elinor Ostrom Career Achievement Award of the APSA Science, Technology & Environmental Politics Section. The award is in recognition of his lifetime contribution to the study of science, technology, and environmental politics.
As part of the Jackson School Covid-19 Global Conversations Series Niko Switek talked with Christoph Struenck (professor at the University of Siegen) about the current situation in Germany and why it handled the pandemic rather well in comparison to other European states. You can find the interview here:
https://jsis.washington.edu/news/making-sense-of-the-world-in-the-time-of-covid-19/
Jack Turner, "Audre Lorde's Anti-Imperial Consciousness," Political Theory, Online First, September 27, 2020: https://doi.org/10.1177/0090591720959858
Co-authors Matt Ziegler, Morgan Wack, Nancy Ingutia, Ian Muiruri, Nicholas Njogu, Kennedy Muriithi, William Njoroge, James Long and Kurtis Heimerl were awarded 'Best Paper' at ACM COMPASS's Computing and Sustainable Societies Conference for their forthcoming paper, "Can Phones Build Relationships? A Case Study of a Kenyan Wildlife Conservancy's Community Development."
Susan Whiting's article “Validating Vignette Designs with Real-World Data: A Study of Legal Mobilization in Response to Land Grievances in Rural China,” (with Xiao Ma), is forthcoming in China Quarterly.
Global Law & Politics Network Workshop Wednesdays. This hour long workshop will occur the first Wednesday of each month and feature lively discussions regarding works in progress and research designs. We realize these are unprecedented times in so many ways and we are excited to build global connections that will help develop, sustain and implement research that can bring change in law, politics, justice and equality. This initiative grows out of a collaborative NSF Law & Science funded project Building Convergent Research Communities in Global Legal Studies (coPIs: Rachel Cichowski, Dan Brinks, Jeff Staton). A paper will be circulated the Friday before to registered participants, short presentation by author and discussant, followed by live discussion in Zoom meeting.
Schedule
- Wed, October 7, 1:00-2:00pm EST. Project: Citizen Oversight of the Legal System in Russia. Presenter: Lauren McCarthy (University of Massachusetts, Amherst). Discussant: Lisa Sundstrom (University of British Columbia)
- Wed, November 4, 1:00-2:00 pm EST. Project: Judicial Corruption, Favor Exchange and the Rule of Law in Pakistan. Presenter: Bakhtawar Ali (Centre for Economic Research Pakistan) and Sultan Mehmood (New Economic School) Discussant: Monika Nalepa (University of Chicago)
- Wed, December 2, 1:00-2:00 pm EST. The Ties Uniting International Law and Empire. Presenter: Karen Alter (Northwestern University). Discussant: Gregory Shaffer (UC Irvine)
Register
- Registration is required to receive the paper and zoom link for the workshops. REGISTER
POLITICAL SCIENCE TALKS/SEMINARS
WISIR will host four panels to discuss salient racial issues facing the country. First of the series, “Social Movements & Racial Justice”, October 7, 2020, 11:00am via Zoom. Moderator: Chris Parker. Panelists: Daniel Gillion (University of Pennsylvania), Juliet Hooker (Brown University), Chris Zepeda- Millan (University of California, Los Angeles). Register here
Severyns Ravenholt Seminar in Comparative Politics presents Dominic Nyhuis (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) “Pay attention to this! Explaining emphasis in legislative speech using automated video analysis in the US House of Representatives”, Friday, October 9, 2020, 1:30- 3:00pm via Zoom. Discussant: Nicolas Wittstock (UW-Political Science). Please contact Kenya Amano via srscp@uw.edu to access Zoom link.
Tri-Campus Interdisciplinary Research Cluster on Human Interactions and Normative Innovation, Department of Political Science, Department of Philosophy and the Program on Ethics presents Simone Chambers (UC Santa Cruz), “The People, The Representative, and the Public Sphere: Rethinking democratic concepts in the face of crisis,” Friday, October 9, 3:30-5:30pm via Zoom. Contact Jamie Mayerfeld, jasonm@uw.edu for the Zoom link.
Political Science presents a three part series UW Political Science Faculty Panel -- Election 2020: A Turning Point?. Second in the series, “Will Your Vote Matter?” October 14, 2020, 6pm via zoom. Click on link above to register. Speakers: Mark Alan Smith (UW-Political Science) “Polls, Campaign Messages, and the Electoral College”, and James Long (UW-Political Science) “Domestic and Foreign Manipulation of Voting in 2020.”
UWISC presents Sarah Dreier (UW-Political Science), “TBA”, October 16, 2020, Noon via Zoom. Discussant: Andrea Cancino-Saenz (UW-Political Science graduate student). Contact uwisc@uw.edu for Zoom link.
Political Science presents a three part series UW Political Science Faculty Panel -- Election 2020: A Turning Point?. Third in the series, “Impacts for our Democracy” October 29, 2020, 6pm via zoom. Click on link above to register. Speakers: Rebecca Thorpe (UW-Political Science) “The Implications of the 2020 Election for Domestic Policy”, and Scott Lemieux (UW-Political Science) “The Supreme Court and the 2020 Election.”