Robert Alan Dahl Award for Academic Excellence
Megan Baffaro
Robert A. Dahl graduated from the University of Washington in 1936 and went on to become one of the most distinguished political scientists of his generation. He earned a Ph.D. from Yale in 1940, became a professor at Yale in 1946, and remained there until his retirement in 1986. He was elected president of the American Political Science Association (APSA) in 1966. Two of his books, Who Governs (1962) and Democracy and Its Critics (1990) received APSA’s Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award as the Best Book of the Year in American Politics. In 1978 he received APSA’s first James Madison Award, given to a scholar whose career is deemed to have been preeminent. In 1982 he was honored by the University of Washington as Alumnus Summa Laude Dignatus, the highest honor the University bestows on a UW graduate.
This year’s winner of the Dahl Award is Megan Baffaro. Megan has excelled as an undergraduate and also challenged herself by enrolling in a graduate seminar. Beyond her formal classes, Megan took advantage of seemingly every academic opportunity available to her. She has been actively involved as an undergraduate fellow of the Center for Environmental Politics, where she conducted independent research. She has participated in the fellows program of the Center for American Politics and Public Policy and the honors program of the Department of Political Science. In that latter capacity, Megan wrote an outstanding honors thesis, “Elite Influence on Climate Polarization in America."
Megan wants to pursue public interest law as a career, and she sought out Boston University’s law school (which she’ll be attending next year) because of its reputation in that area. Congratulations, Megan!
Daniel S. Lev Award for Best Honors Thesis
Ly Coffin
Daniel S. Lev was an eminent scholar in comparative politics and comparative legal systems with expertise in law, politics, and human rights in Southeast Asia. He taught with distinction for the Political Science Department at the University of Washington for nearly 30 years. Lev developed the department Honors program into a model of intellectual inquiry that has been emulated across the UW campus and around the nation.
In her award-winning thesis, “Unintended Consequences in Afghanistan: An Analysis of Foreign Aid and Violence,” Ly Coffin tackles several difficult, yet important, questions concerning the interplay between international development assistance and armed conflict. While much past work has looked at this topic from the perspective of foreign donors, the government, or rebel groups, Ly investigates how foreign aid and violence shape the perceptions of ordinary people living amidst fighting. In her thesis, she combines records from thousands of individual development projects with responses from a unique multi-year survey of the Afghan population. Her analysis shows that there is not a single straightforward effect of foreign aid on local perceptions and experiences with armed conflict. Rather, the role of foreign aid changes over time and interacts with local context to shape ordinary people’s opportunities for economic advancement as well as exposure to violence. Ly’s project makes an important contribution to our understanding of the gap that too often can open between international intentions and what actually takes place on the ground.
Sharon Redeker Award for Outstanding Achievement in Public Service
Kiran Singh
The Redeker Award recognizes significant undergraduate achievement in the area of public service. It is named after Sharon Redeker, who served as the department’s Director of Academic Services for 17 years and who built the department’s internship and volunteer service programs. Redeker's commitment to citizenship and public spirit remains at the core of our program.
Kiran Singh, the 2021 winner of the Redeker Award, learned service from her parents and her Sikh community. She describes her service work around three principals of Sikh faith. Some of her works have been tanh (physical labors), including staffing a Neighborhood Legal Clinic with the King County Bar Association, and working with her professional fraternity to sort and sell donated clothing each quarter for the Downtown Emergency Services Center. Some of the ways she has practiced dhan (financial charity), are by raising thousands of dollars for Black professional organizations and legal defense funds during the Black Lives Matters marches last June, and by hosting a personal fundraiser netting $4,000 for farmer-suicide relief funds in light of the on-going protests in India. Finally, she has worked on the third principle of manh (services of the mind) through her time as a Peer Educator for the Interdisciplinary Honors Program, guiding incoming Interdisciplinary Honors students through the feelings of anxiety, stress, and self-doubt that come with starting at a new institution. As a student leader in the Interdisciplinary Honors Program, she also served as a student representative for the Intersectional Justice and Equity Working Group. This group of students, faculty, staff, and community stakeholders worked to build more accessible pathways to the program and generate more equitable representations through the incoming cohorts.
She has also completed three political/voting rights-related internships, written about student issues for The Daily, served at the highest level of our student government as an advocate for student-employees, led three different RSOs (aiming to increase diversity in the legal field, increase access to education for incarcerated individuals, and increase student knowledge of drug safety), all while working full-time and going to school. Her service has tied back into her studies as she wrote an Honors thesis exploring community support and criminal justice outcomes.
She is excited to bring her service-focused leadership to a joint-degree program, working towards a JD and a Masters of Public Administration.