Einaudi Center for International Studies
China hit brakes on TikTok Deal After Trump Announced Wide-ranging Tariffs, AP Source Says
Sarah Kreps, PACS
Sarah Kreps, director of the Tech Policy Institute, discusses TikTok.
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‘Liberation Day’ Is Here. 5 Things to Watch For.
Eswar Prasad, SAP
“The era of increasingly free and unfettered trade is coming to a crashing end as the Trump tariffs lead to a surge of protectionist measures around the world,” says Eswar Prasad, senior professor of international trade policy.
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Why No One is Challenging Trump’s Executive Order that Keeps TikTok Running
Sarah Kreps, PACS
Sarah Kreps, director of the Tech Policy Institute, discusses TikTok still functioning despite bipartisan consensus about the application's risk to national security.
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Education for All? Literature, Culture and Education Development in Britain and Denmark
April 18, 2025
12:15 pm
White Hall, 106
Why did Denmark develop mass education for all in 1814, while Britain created a public-school system only in 1870 that primarily educated academic achievers? Cathie Jo Martin argues that fiction writers and their literary narratives inspired education campaigns throughout the nineteenth-century. Danish writers imagined mass schools as the foundation for a great society and economic growth. Their depictions fortified the mandate to educate all people and showed neglecting low-skill youth would waste societal resources and threaten the social fabric. Conversely, British authors pictured mass education as harming social stability, lower-class work, and national culture. Their stories of youths who overcame structural injustices with individual determination made it easier to blame students who failed to seize educational opportunities. Novel and compelling, Education for All? uses a multidisciplinary perspective to offer a unique gaze into historical policymaking.
Hosted by the Government Department and co-sponsored by the Institute for European Studies.
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Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Institute for European Studies
Institute for European Studies Graduate Fellows Symposium
May 6, 2025
11:30 am
Uris Hall, G08
New Perspectives in European Studies: IES Graduate Fellows 2025 Spring Research Symposium
IES Graduate Fellows will be presenting their work in conference style presentations followed by time for discussions.
Lunch: 11:30am
Panel 1: Texts and Translation (11:45am - 12:30pm)
"Biblical Translation and Courtly Assimilation: the Socio-Political Imagination of 12th-Century Anglo-Norman Biblical Translations"
Chiara Visentin, Medieval Studies
"Iberia and the Partisan: Locating the Spanish Mind of Carl Schmitt"
Madeleine Lemos, History
5 minute break
Panel 2: Civic Engagement and Contemporary Challenges (12:35pm-1:20pm)
"Civic Engagement, Depolarization, and Crisis"
Frances Cayton, Government
"The International Political Economy of Contemporary Surveillance Technologies"
Amelia C. Arsenault, Government
10 minute break
Panel 3: Interpreting the Twentieth Century (1:30pm - 2:30pm)
"The Origins of Mussolini’s Decade of War"
Chris Mingo, History
"Straight Making as Organized Crime"
Angela Elissa Kothe, Government
"Diaspora and Displacement: Tracking the 1972 Ugandan Asian Expulsion in Empire's Aftermath"
Priyanka Sen, History of Architecture and Urban Development
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Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Institute for European Studies
‘Cosmic Verdict’ Fears Grip Myanmar Junta in Earthquake’s Aftermath
Kyaw Hsan Hlaing, SEAP
Kyaw Hsan Hlaing, graduate student with our Southeast Asia Program, says “The regime will take this as an opportunity to show it is ‘in control’ of the relief effort.”
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Canada, Greenland, Gaza, and Ukraine Are Homelands—Not Frontiers for Exploitation
Karim-Aly S. Kassam, PACS/SAP
Canada is viewed as nothing more than a frontier by the U.S. administration. In history, invading colonizers treat these lands and its peoples as ripe for extraction and exploitation.
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The Homelands of Canada, Gaza, Greenland, and Ukraine
Karim-Aly S. Kassam, PACS/SAP
“How we mistreat each other parallels how we abuse the land, and how we misuse the land corresponds to how we oppress each other,” writes Karim-Aly Kassam.
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How COVID Changed Latin America
Gustavo Flores-Macías in World in Focus
Gustavo Flores-Macías (LACS) coauthored a Journal of Democracy article that looks at examples from Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Mexico, and Peru to explore why some political systems fared better.
“The emergency left room for political agency and the framing of innovative solutions to governance challenges. While the pandemic did see increases in political corruption, opportunism among leaders, human-rights abuses, militarization, and economic hardship, there has also been an upside.”
COVID-19 was a stress test for democracy in Latin America and the Caribbean, according to the January article.
Pandemic death tolls and socioeconomic effects in the region were among the worst in the world. Measures adopted to contain the virus gave corrupt leaders cover to consolidate power—with power grabs, militarization, human rights abuses, and pandemic denial documented across the region.
The effects were not uniformly negative, however, the article argues: “The pandemic also prompted renewed economic crisis management, social mobilization, and local checks to central power.”
Successful national and local responses to the pandemic offer some hopeful evidence of democratic resilience. Protests became more common and influential during the pandemic as “voters and social movements mobilized to protect human rights and contest inequitable reforms.” New openings for political challengers will shape the coming decade of governance in the region, the article predicts.
“The COVID pandemic's effects are still putting strain on democracy and governance in Latin America and the Caribbean. The closing of civic space and the rise of corruption, citizen insecurity, political discontent, and populist power grabs are ongoing trends,” Flores-Macías and his coauthors conclude. “Yet pandemic-era repression and backsliding could have been worse, which suggests that democratic systems and norms in Latin American may be stronger than many thought.”
Gustavo Flores-Macías is a steering committee member and past director of Einaudi's Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program. He is a professor in the College of Arts and Sciences and Cornell Brooks School of Public Policy.
Featured in World in Focus Briefs
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CRADLE White Paper Series
The CRADLE White Paper Series promotes original thinking in law and economics, drawing on insights from the social sciences. It is meant to be a space for publishing early ideas and work-in-progress.