Migrations Program
Laidlaw Scholars Q+A Webinar with Pachaysana
November 5, 2025
12:00 pm
For the summer 2026 Leadership in Action experience, students will be placed with the Pachaysana Foundation exploring what it means to be an intercultural leader in today’s complex, fractured world. Please attend this Q+A webinar with Pachaysana Foundation to learn more about their work and how the Laidlaw Scholars explore leadership as something we live—grown in relationship and rooted in the wisdom of agrarian, Indigenous, and activist communities.
Attendance and participation in the Q+A are highly recommended for Laidlaw Scholars applicants. Applications are due January 12, 2026.
Register here. Can’t attend? Another Q+A webinar is scheduled for November 6.
Contact programs@einaudi.cornell.edu with questions.
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The Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies hosts info sessions for graduate and for undergraduate students to learn more about funding opportunities, international travel, research, and internships. View the full calendar of fall semester sessions.
Additional Information
Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies
East Asia Program
Southeast Asia Program
Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Institute for African Development
Institute for European Studies
South Asia Program
Migrations Program
Jonathan Lam '27 Receives Trailblazer in Organizing and Activism Award
Jonathan Lam, Migrations scholar and Laidlaw scholar at Einaudi, is the inaugural recipient of the “Trailblazer in Organizing and Activism” award for his efforts in Refugee and Migrant Rights, which were recognized at the Amnesty International USA Human Rights Conference in late February.
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World in Focus: Venezuelan Drug Boat Strikes
October 7, 2025
4:00 pm
Uris Hall, G08
Join Einaudi Center experts for World in Focus Talks on global events in the news and on your mind. Our faculty's research and policy insights put the world in focus.
This year we’re hosting informal campus discussions on many Tuesday afternoons. This week’s topic:
Following a military buildup in the Caribbean, the U.S. government has confirmed multiple airstrikes on Venezuelan boats suspected of drug smuggling—killing at least 17 in September. The U.S. claims these actions are “armed conflict” against narcoterrorist organizations. The Venezuelan government condemns the attacks as illegal.
Is the U.S. violating international law? What may happen if tensions continue to escalate?
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Featured Faculty
Oumar Ba (PACS) | Government Pedro M. R. Barbosa (LACS) | Visiting ScholarKen Roberts (LACS) | GovernmentDavid Bateman | GovernmentAleida Sandoval | Visiting Scholar
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Conversations Matter at Einaudi
This conversation is hosted by the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies and its regional and thematic programs. Find out what's in store for students at Einaudi!
Additional Information
Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies
East Asia Program
Southeast Asia Program
Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Institute for African Development
Institute for European Studies
South Asia Program
Migrations Program
Southwest Asia and North Africa Program
Countermapping the Carceral Security State: Beyond the Imperial Boomerang
As part of a burgeoning interest in analyses of the colonial roots of contemporary state practices, scholars in the field of International Relations have sought to “decolonize” the study of security. To do so, they have examined how the methods of control and repression that were first developed in the colonies were brought back to the metropole to lay the foundation for the carceral security state.
Article
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Type
- Article
Publication Details
Publication Year: 2025
Journal: International Studies Quarterly
Warming Climate is Biggest Threat to Rangelands
Lund Debater Chris Barrett in World in Focus
Chris Barrett (Dyson/Brooks) analyzes climate impacts on Mongolian rangeland this month in Science. He joins Muna Ndulo (Law) on October 22 to debate the future of international aid.
Is (Cutting) International Aid Good?
This year's Lund Critical Debate explores the impact of aid on global communities, what makes aid effective—and how to move forward.
“It’s always struck me as puzzling, why people in suits and ties in capital cities seem to think that the pastoralists don’t understand very well how to manage these lands. And yet, there’s this common belief that you have to get them to reduce their herd sizes. That just hurts the herders.”
Overgrazing is commonly blamed as a key cause of rangeland degradation—yet policy measures designed to limit grazing damage, like herd-size restrictions and livestock taxes, can have devastating consequences on herders' livelihoods.
In Mongolia—where 70 percent of the land area is rangeland—the government revived a national livestock head tax in 2021 in response to perceived overgrazing impacts.
New research from Chris Barrett (IAD/SEAP) identifies a more significant factor: climate change.
Barrett's team analyzed longitudinal data on vegetation conditions and livestock population, collected annually by the Mongolian government across 40 years. They found that larger herds can slightly reduce rangeland productivity over the short term, but climate and weather have a much larger effect. The team published the findings on September 18 in Science.
“When we look really carefully at the equivalent of county scale over the whole country, over 41 years, we find that the longer-run changes in rangeland conditions are entirely attributable to changes in the climate,” said Barrett.
“Mongolian rangelands are affected more by the collective greenhouse gas–emitting behaviors around the globe than by local herders,” he wrote in the Science article. “Policymakers might therefore usefully focus attention on global mitigation and on international compensation for climate damages and less on taxing herders who … appear responsible for little if any of the change in Mongolia’s rangeland primary productivity over the past 40 years.”
The project began among Barrett's graduate students, including one who grew up on the Mongolian rangelands. Coauthors include two alumni from Mongolia—Tumenkhusel Avirmed ’21, MS ’23, now a research data analyst at Stanford University, and Avralt-Od Purevjav, PhD ’20, a consultant at the World Bank.
Chris Barrett is the Stephen B. and Janice G. Ashley Professor of Applied Economics and Management in the Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management and a professor in the Cornell Brooks School of Public Policy. He is a frequent commentator and policy advisor on food security and agricultural economics.
Featured in World in Focus Briefs
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You've Never Heard Climate Change Like This Before
Wendy Erb, SEAP/Migrations
Wendy Erb, a Cornell Lab of Ornithology researcher, studies the effects of tropical peatland fires on orangutan vocalizations, revealing how climate-driven changes impact animal communication and health.
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‘Defending Haudenosaunee Sovereignty’ Exhibit Opens Sept. 24
Supported by Migrations
An international exhibit will run Sept. 24-28 on the Arts Quad, celebrating the centenary of Deskaheh Levi General’s 1923 intervention on behalf of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy at the League of Nations in Geneva, Switzerland.
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Information Session: Fulbright U.S. Student Program
November 17, 2025
4:45 pm
The Fulbright U.S. Student Program supports U.S. citizens to study, conduct research in any field, or teach English in more than 150 countries. The program is open to graduate students, recent graduates, and young professionals. Undergraduate students who wish to begin the program immediately after graduation are encouraged to start the process in their junior year. Recent graduates are welcome to apply through Cornell.
The Fulbright program at Cornell is administered by the Mario Einaudi Center for International studies. Applicants are supported through all stages of the application and are encouraged to start early by contacting fulbright@einaudi.cornell.edu.
Register for the virtual session.
Can’t attend? Contact fulbright@einaudi.cornell.edu.
Additional Information
Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies
East Asia Program
Southeast Asia Program
Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Institute for European Studies
South Asia Program
Migrations Program
Institute for African Development
Southwest Asia and North Africa Program
Is (Cutting) International Aid Good?
October 22, 2025
5:00 pm
Goldwin Smith Hall, G76, Lewis Auditorium
Lund Critical Debate
Since January 2025, the United States has slashed billions in international aid—and effectively dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), responsible for administering U.S. development and humanitarian aid around the world. In what has become the largest restructuring of aid in the nation’s history, thousands of UN-administered programs have also lost funding, disrupting critical programs and services, breaking supply chains, and leading to widespread closures and layoffs.
These sweeping cuts affect food security, global health, democratic governance, and more—and the stakes have never been higher. As the landscape of international aid evolves, the world faces new questions about the impact of aid on communities, what makes international aid effective—and how to move forward.
This year's Lund debate from the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies brings together policy and practice experts for an unfiltered look at the future of international aid. Join Einaudi Center faculty Chris Barrett (Dyson/Brooks) and Muna Ndulo (Law) as they tackle these questions: Who benefits from aid? Do some types of aid work better than others? Should we pursue new approaches to international development? What are the best ways to take strategic action in the world while investing in America’s security, economy, and global position?
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Interested in attending? Complete this RSVP.
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Panelists
Chris Barrett is the Stephen B. and Janice G. Ashley Professor of Applied Economics and Management in the Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management and a professor in the Cornell Brooks School of Public Policy. He is coeditor-in-chief of the journal Food Policy and a frequent commentator and policy advisor on food security and agricultural economics. Barrett won the USAID Science and Technology Pioneers Prize (2013), among many other awards for research, teaching, and public outreach. Read recent Chronicle coverage of Barrett's research.
Muna Ndulo is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of International and Comparative Law at Cornell Law School and an internationally recognized scholar in the fields of constitution making, governance and institution building, international criminal law, African legal systems, and human rights. Ndulo has served as consultant to the African Development Bank, World Bank, Economic Commission for Africa, United Nations Development Program, and other international organizations. He led the Einaudi Center's Institute for African Development from 2001 to 2020.
Moderator
Paul Kaiser is the Einaudi Center's practitioner in residence in fall 2025. Kaiser has extensive experience in international development, with a focus on sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and the Pacific Islands. His career spans roles at USAID, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, and World Bank. Previously, Kaiser taught political science and African studies at Mississippi State University and the University of Pennsylvania.
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About the Debate
The Lund Critical Debate is a signature event of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies. Established in 2008, Einaudi's Lund Debate series is made possible by the generosity of Judith Lund Biggs '57.
Additional Information
Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies
East Asia Program
Southeast Asia Program
Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Institute for African Development
Institute for European Studies
South Asia Program
Migrations Program
Southwest Asia and North Africa Program