Ambassador Ruth Davis: Foreign Service Should Look Like America ...

Volume 28, Issue 3 

Summer 2005 

Ambassador Ruth Davis: 

Foreign Service Should 

Look Like America 

Kamras ’95 Named National 

Teacher of the Year 

Policy Workshop Helps Write 

Philadelphia’s Universal Health 

Care Plan

A Message from the Dean 

Summer is upon us—the 

time of year that most 

nonacademics refer to as 

our vacation. The School 

faculty, however, are deeply engaged 

in their research and writing, even 

if they are scattered to many parts 

of the world. In addition, our graduate 

students are interning in 

Washington, D.C., and around the 

globe, and our hardworking administrative 

staff are catching up from 

the mad rush at the end of the year 

and gearing up for the fall semester. As you will read about on 

page 3, we have more gearing up to do than usual, as we prepare 

for an exciting year of 75th Anniversary celebrations. Our worldwide 

celebratory events run from September 2005 to June 2006; 

I am counting on seeing as many of you as possible, either in 

Princeton, around the country, or abroad! 

As we close the books on the 2004–05 academic year, let me 

update you on several exciting new administrative and faculty 

appointments. First, Professor of Politics and Public Affairs 

Nolan McCarty will take on the role of Associate Dean for a 

three-year term. He will oversee academic affairs for the School 

and serve as my deputy whenever I am on the road. 

Next, we also have several new additions to the faculty ranks, 

which come on top of several retirements. Michael N. Danielson 

*62 and Julian Wolpert, who have each served at WWS for more 

than four decades, have announced their retirements (see page 

11). In an important new development for WWS, we have 

added four senior faculty members as joint appointments from 

existing University departments in areas where the School either 

has a particular need or where a link to another department 

helps us gain invaluable critical mass. 

This summer Kim Lane Scheppele will become director of the 

School’s Program in Law and Public Affairs, and will be the 

Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Public Affairs in the 

Woodrow Wilson School and the University Center for Human 

Values. Kim comes to Princeton from the University of 

Pennsylvania Law School, where she was the John J. O’Brien 

Professor of Comparative Law and a professor of sociology. She 

has been one of the pioneers in comparative socio-legal research 

and the study of comparative constitutionalism; her research 

areas also include post-Soviet constitutional transformation and 

counterterrorism policies in democratic systems. 

The University’s Paul Starr has been named the School’s Stuart 

Professor of Communications and Public Affairs, as well as a 

professor of sociology and public affairs, effective July 1. Starr is 

the author of the influential book The Creation of the Media: 

Political Origins of Modern Communications (Basic Books, 2004), 

which won the Goldsmith Book Prize. He is also the co-editor of 

The American Prospect. 

Two other School faculty members have been awarded named 

professorships: Douglas Massey, who has been named the Henry 

G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs; and 

Katherine Newman, the Malcolm Stevenson Forbes, Class of 

1941, Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs. 

Other new intra-University appointments this fall include 

Professor Edward Felten, who will be jointly appointed to the 

School from the University’s Department of Computer Science. 

Ed, an expert in computer security, privacy, and technology law 

and policy, will join WWS as a professor of computer science 

and public affairs, and will be actively involved in our Program 

in Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy. 

In addition, Harold James will join the School as a professor of 

history and international affairs. Harold is an extraordinarily 

prolific and distinguished scholar; one of his recent books is The 

End of Globalization: Lessons from the Great Depression (Harvard 

University Press, 2001). He serves as chairman of the editorial 

board of World Politics. In 2004, Harold was awarded the first 

Helmut Schmidt Prize for Transatlantic Economic History. 

Miguel Centeno, director of the Princeton Institute for 

International and Regional Studies, will formally join the School 

as a professor of sociology and international affairs. He is the 

author of several books, including Blood and Debt: War and 

Statemaking in Latin America (2002), and is presently working 

on two book projects: The Historical Atlas of Globalization and 

The Triumph and Dilemmas of Liberalism. 

The above appointments, as well as the arrival this fall of 

Nannerl and Robert Keohane (first announced to you in the 

Autumn 2004 WWS News), and Stanford’s Christopher Chyba 

(see page 12), who will co-direct our Program in Science and 

Global Security, position the School for continued growth and 

innovation. A number of faculty committees are poised to start 

working on a review of our Ph.D. program, a review of the 

undergraduate program, and a review of both present and potential 

joint-degree programs. Our celebration of the 75th 

Anniversary is the ideal time to look forward as well as back, to 

see what we are doing well and what we could do better, and to 

break new ground. I hope you will join us for the kickoff gala at 

the end of September, and contribute to our celebrations and 

track our progress throughout the year. 

Anne-Marie Slaughter ’80, Dean 

Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs

Summer 2005 

Volume 28 Issue 3 

Editor/Layout 

Karyn M. Olsen 

Contributing Writers 

Steven Barnes 

Fatema Gunja MPA ’06 

Ginger Moored MPA ’06 

Patricia Yelavich 

Photos 

Denise Applewhite 

Maya Gilliam, D.C.P.S. 

Sameer Khan 

Peter Krogh 

Larry Levanti 

Jon Roemer 

Printing 

Prism Color Corporation, Inc. 

Moorestown, N.J. 

Published by: 

Office of External Affairs 

The Woodrow Wilson School 

of Public and International Affairs 

Robertson Hall 

Princeton University 

Princeton, NJ 08544-1013 

Tel (609) 258-2943 

Fax (609) 258-4765 

Questions, comments, and 

suggestions can be e-mailed to: 

Karyn Olsen 

Manager of Communications 

kolsen@princeton.edu 

Steven Barnes 

Assistant Dean of Public Affairs 

sbarnes@princeton.edu 

Special thanks to Jean and Dick Atcheson for 

their proofreading and editing expertise. 

Front cover photo by Larry Levanti 

WWSNews 

The magazine of the 

Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs 

I N T H I S I S S U E 

Volume 28, Issue 3 Summer 2005 

A Message from the Dean 

Degrees and Distinctions Awarded to WWS Graduates at 

258th University Commencement 2 

WWS 75th Anniversary Celebration to Be Held September 30–October 1, 2005 3 

Careers in Foreign Service—Ambassador Ruth Davis Discusses the Increasing 

Importance of America’s Diplomatic Skills 4 

Sixteen M.P.A.’s Awarded Presidential Management Fellowships 6 

Brandon Grove MPA ’52 Recounts Life and Times of a Career Diplomat 7 

Faculty Spotlight: Professor Aaron Friedberg Returns from Service as 

Deputy National Security Adviser 8 

Faculty Notes 10 

Danielson and Wolpert, Scholars in Urban Policy and Planning, Earn Emeritus Status 11 

Biological and Nuclear Proliferation Expert Christopher Chyba to Join WWS 12 

Slaughter, Ikenberry Contribute Foreign Policy Vision to Blogosphere 13 

Alumni News: Jason Kamras ’95 Honored as National Teacher of the Year 13 

Graduate Program: Graduate Students Engage Washington Policymakers 

on Middle East Crisis 14 

Centers Spotlight: “Future of Children” Practitioners Conference—School Readiness: 

Closing Racial and Ethnic Gaps 16 

Research Center and Program News 18 

Graduate Policy Workshop: WWS Graduate Students Write Philadelphia’s 

Universal Health Care Plan 19 

Faculty Research: Candidates “Face Value” Could Influence Voter Behavior 21 

Policy Brief: Incarceration, Marriage, and Family Life 22 

Faculty Notes: Massey Testifies Before Congress on Immigration, 

U.S. Relations with Mexico 24 

WWS Calendar 25 

Helen V. Milner Named Chair of Department of Politics 26 

For more information or to request additional copies, please call (609) 258-2943

Commencement2005 

Jon Roemer 

Degrees and Distinctions Awarded to WWS 

Graduates at 258th University Commencement 

At the 258th Princeton University 

Commencement on May 31, 

fifty-two M.P.A., twelve M.P.A./ 

U.R.P., five M.P.A./J.D., one 

M.P.A./ M.B.A., sixteen M.P.P., and seven 

Ph.D. students received their degrees and 

joined the ranks of Woodrow Wilson 

School graduate alumni. In addition to 

their degrees, six students received 

Certificates in Science, Technology, and 

Environmental Policy (STEP), twelve students 

received Certificates in Health and 

Health Policy (HHP), and one student 

received a Certificate in Demography 

(OPR). 

The School also awarded the first annual 

David Bradford Award to Sarah Meginness 

MPA ’05. Named for the late Professor 

Bradford, the award is given to the School 

graduate student who has earned a certificate 

in Science, Technology, and 

Environmental Policy (STEP), while 

achieving both a distinguished academic 

record and a reputation for service and 

exemplary citizenship within the STEP 

program. 

Meginness concentrated in Field II, 

Development Studies, at WWS and did her 

summer internship at the International 

Energy Agency in Paris, working in the 

Energy and Environment Division. She was 

Sarah Meginness (left), recipient of the first annual David 

Bradford Award, with Dean Slaughter. 

2 Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs 

Continuing a Princeton tradition, new graduates exit 

the Commencement ceremony via the FitzRandolph 

Gate. 

selected as a Presidential Management 

Fellow and is joining the U.S. 

Environmental Protection Agency in 

Washington, after graduation. 

At the hooding reception the night before 

Commencement, WWS Dean Anne-Marie 

Slaughter presented the following annual 

achievement awards to graduate students: 

Master in Public Policy Award: The first 

award, given to the Master in Public Policy 

student who has achieved the most distinguished 

academic record among his or her 

colleagues, was presented to Mandeep 

Bains. Before entering the M.P.P. program 

Bains worked for the European 

Commission and served as an economist/ 

budgetary assistance program manager for 

the Europe-Aid Cooperation Office. 

Jon Roemer

Herman “Red” Somers Prize: The 

Somers Prize, established to honor the 

memory of Herman M. “Red” Somers, a 

former WWS faculty member and prominent 

authority on health care, was received 

by David Grande MPA ’05, a medical doctor 

who distinguished himself in his 

domestic policy interests, coursework, and 

commitment to public service. Grande did 

his WWS summer internship at the 

Philadelphia Department of Public Health, 

where he was instrumental in developing 

the fall 2004 Graduate Policy Workshop 

“Philadelphia Health Care Reform.” 

Grande will now become a Robert Wood 

Johnson Health and Society Scholar at the 

University of Pennsylvania. 

Donald E. Stokes Prize: The Stokes Prize 

for academic achievement and public service 

leadership is awarded to the graduating 

M.P.A. student whose achievements best 

exemplify the life and work of the late 

Donald E. Stokes, who was dean of the 

Woodrow Wilson School from 1974 until 

1992. This year’s recipient is Ciara 

Knudsen. She did her summer internship 

at the U.S. Department of State in 

Washington, working in the Office of 

Policy Planning. Knudsen is one of sixteen 

graduating M.P.A. students who have been 

selected as Presidential Management 

Fellows (see pages 6–7), and she was one of 

seven students who passed the second-year 

Qualifying M.P.A. Exam with distinction. 

Additional information on the University’s 

258th Commencement can be found at the 

Princeton University Web site: 

www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/ 

S11/75/61I13/index. xml?section=featured. 

WWS 75th Anniversary Kickoff Celebration 

to Be Held September 30–October 1, 2005 

Beginning in September 2005, 

the Woodrow Wilson School 

will celebrate its 75-year tradition 

of educating and encouraging 

young leaders at home and abroad to 

use their talents to serve their country 

and the world. 

The celebration will begin the weekend 

of September 30–October 1 with 

the kickoff event. Tentatively scheduled events include a panel 

addressing the United States’ national security threats over the long 

term; a mock National Security Council meeting focusing on the collapse 

of a nuclear regime, and a discussion of homeland security and 

how safe we can be with the rising threats of terrorism. U.S. Secretary 

of State Condoleezza Rice will present the first of two keynotes, 

scheduled for Friday, September 30 at 6:00 p.m. 

A full listing of all the events scheduled, panelists, and locations can 

be found at the anniversary Web site at www.wws.princeton.edu/ 

75thAnniversary. An RSVP is requested for attendance at all events; 

please e-mail acraven@princeton.edu or fax a list of the events you will 

be attending to (609) 258-2688. 

Plans are also under way for the regional, European, and Asian events 

scheduled for later in the year. Princeton University President Shirley 

Tilghman and WWS Dean Anne-Marie Slaughter will welcome WWS 

alumni “on the other side of the pond” in London December 2–3, 2005. 

The current state of transatlantic relations; ethical, legal, and policy 

issues in the life sciences; and the implications of well-being research 

in the U.S. and Europe are all topics of discussion. 

In addition, anniversary events are tentatively planned for Los Angeles 

(January 20–21, 2006), the National Press Club in Washington 

(February 6, 2006), San Francisco (March 4, 2006), Atlanta (March 9–10, 

2006), Tokyo, Japan (April 7–8, 2006), Chicago (April 27, 2006), and 

Boston (May 13, 2006). The fourth annual Princeton Colloquium on 

Public and International Affairs, to be held April 28–29, 2006, will also 

celebrate the anniversary of the School, and is tentatively themed 

“The Life, Teachings, and Legacy of Woodrow Wilson.” 

Throughout the year, a series of public lectures will be held in conjunction 

with the 75th Anniversary. The schedule includes: 

Francis Fukuyama, Ph.D., Bernard L. Schwartz Professor, International 

Political Economy, School of Advanced International Studies, Johns 

Hopkins (September 28); Robert B. Barnett, Partner, Williams & 

Connolly; a Presidential debate expert (October 6); Clint Bolick, 

President and General Counsel, Alliance for School Choice (October 

18); Patrick Butler, Vice President, Washington Post Company (October 

27); Emmett Carson, President and CEO, Minneapolis Foundation 

(December 8). More information about this series can be found at 

www.wws.princeton.edu/pubaff. 

The 75th Anniversary Closing Celebration will coincide with the 2006 

Princeton Reunions, June 2-3, 2006. 

Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs 3

JuniorSummerInstitute 

Careers in 

Foreign Service– 

Ambassador Ruth Davis Discusses the Increasing 

Importance of America’s Diplomatic Skills 

Larry Levanti 

On June 28, Ambassador Ruth Davis 

addressed students participating in the 

Woodrow Wilson School’s Junior 

Summer Institute (JSI), on the value 

of careers in the U.S. Foreign Service, as well as 

the need for diversity in the U.S. diplomatic corps, 

declaring that “the Foreign Service should, but 

does not, look like America.” 

A career member of the Senior Foreign Service, 

Ambassador Davis is presently on detail from the 

Department of State serving as Distinguished 

Advisor for International Affairs at Howard 

University in Washington, D.C. Over the span of 

three decades of service, she has served in such 

positions as Director General of the Foreign 

Service and Director of 

Human Resources, U.S. 

Ambassador to Benin, 

Consul-General in 

Barcelona, and has achieved 

the rank of Career 

Ambassador. 

Speaking to JSI students in 

300 Wallace Hall, Davis 

highlighted the fact that 

“September 11, 2001, put 

diplomacy and international 

affairs on the front burner in 

this country. It placed an 

increased importance on 

America’s diplomatic skills.” 

However, she went on, 

“September 11 made it more 

urgent for our government to 


call on the talents of the diverse racial and ethnic elements 

of this country to effectively deal with the 

challenges of international terrorism.” 

“I believe strongly,” Davis said, “that American 

minorities and nonminorities who value diversity 

can and must play a significant role in the formulation, 

articulation, and implementation of our 

nation’s foreign policy. These Americans must be 

more involved in the processes that define our 

national interest and must take a more active role 

in influencing American foreign policy on matters 

across the board.” 

“The Foreign Service 

should, but does not, 

look like America.” 

—Ambassador Ruth Davis 

In this context, Davis told students that “the 

Foreign Service offers a unique opportunity to represent 

this great country and its people overseas. 

That means advancing U.S. security, promoting 

America’s economic well-being, defending democracy 

and human rights, serving the needs of 

American citizens overseas, and contributing to the 

eradication of terrorism, drug trafficking, and 

environmental degradation.” 

For almost two decades, the Woodrow Wilson 

School has hosted summer institutes as part of a

Sameer Khan 

Courses in statistics and economics are fundamentals in 

public policy. The Junior Summer Institute provides both 

introductory and advanced courses in these areas. 

tradition of promoting diversity in the 

School’s own student body and in the 

public service arena. The JSI is a sevenweek 

program structured to introduce 

or strengthen skills in economics, statistics, 

policy analysis, writing, public 

speaking, and organization/time management. 

The goal of the program is to 

prepare college students for graduate 

study and careers in public policy and 

international affairs. 

To participate in the JSI program, 

applicants must be enrolled as college 

juniors who have one or two semesters 

remaining in college after completing 

the summer institute, and must demonstrate 

an interest in and commitment to 

cross-cultural and social issues and public 

service. 

Ambassador Davis covered the various 

career tracks, or “cones,” to be pursued 

in the Foreign Service: Management; 

Consular; Political; Economic; Public 

Diplomacy. She discussed some of the 

qualifications that students who are 

interested in careers in international 

affairs in general and the State 

Department in particular would do well 

to acquire. “We are looking for students 

who are broad-based academically and 

who are well versed in American history, 

government, culture, economics, 

political science, public administration 

and management, current affairs, and 

public diplomacy,” she 

said. 

She emphasized that in 

a post-9/11 world, “We 

now need to have flexible 

generalists who are 

knowledgeable about 

science, arms control 

issues, international law, 

and environmental 

issues. We need specialists 

who are knowledgeable 

about information 

technology, construction 

engineering, medical doctors 

and health practitioners, 

security officers, and office 

management specialists.” 

Davis also stressed the urgent need for 

current and future Foreign Service 

Officers to be fluent in the so-called 

hard languages like Arabic, Chinese, 

Farsi, and Russian. “Americans, I must 

say, have not distinguished ourselves in 

the foreign language arena,” she said. 

Davis told students that the problem 

was serious enough that some people 

make jokes on the subject. “Have you 

heard this one?” she asked. “You call 

someone who speaks three languages 

trilingual, someone who speaks two lan- 

JuniorSummerInstitute 

guages bilingual, and you call someone 

who speaks only one language an 

American. That is our well-earned, 

unfortunate reputation.” 

“We need students who will become 

diplomats with a commitment to public 

service, with the courage to challenge 

conventional wisdom, and who possess 

the ambition, ethics, and fortitude 

required to succeed in a very competitive 

arena,” she said. 

Davis concluded her talk by telling students 

“My goal is to continue to work 

at making the Foreign Service of the 

United States reflective of the diversity 

of this great country of ours. We still 

have a ways to go on this goal. But I 

dare to dream, I dare to believe that it 

can be done in our lifetime.” 

At the end of each Junior Summer 

Institute students present a comprehensive 

final report on a current policy 

issue that will encompass the skills 

acquired in their coursework, field 

research, policy analysis, and writing 

and computer workshops. Required 

coursework includes six weeks of classroom 

instruction and one week of field 

research in Quantitative Methods for 

Policy Analysis; Economics for Policy 

Analysis; and a Policy Workshop. 

Biweekly luncheon seminars give students the opportunity to get more information 

about jobs in public service, the services the Woodrow Wilson School offers to its 

students and alumni, and advice from alumni in the field. 

Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs 5 

Sameer Khan

Sixteen MPA’s Awarded Presidential 

Management Fellowships 

Sixteen second-year M.P.A. 

students have been selected 

by the U.S. Office of 

Personnel Management 

(OPM) as finalists in the national 

Presidential Management Fellows 

(PMF) Program competition. They 

are: Neil Ahlsten, Joe Bernath, Eileen 

Burke, Newsha Dau, Jessica 

Goldberg, Barbora Jemelkova, Shawn 

Johnson, Adrienne Corpuz Joyce, 

Martha King, Ciara Knudsen, Hilary 

Mathews, Sarah Meginness, Sugeni 

Perez, Chanthip Phongkamsavath, 

Karen Showalter, and Megan Wilson. 

The Presidential Management 

Fellows Program, originally established 

by Executive Order in 1977 

and updated in 2003 by President 

George W. Bush to expand the scope 

of agency participation, is designed 

to attract exemplary master’s, juris 

doctorate, and doctoral-level students 

who have an interest in, and demonstrated 

commitment to, pursuing a 

career in public policy within the 

federal government. The two-year 

paid program provides approximately 

400 fellows with 80 hours of training 

per year, and the opportunity to 

work with federal agencies on 

domestic and international issues in 

public administration, technology, 

science, criminal justice, health, 

financial management, and other 

fields, all in support of public 

service. 

To be eligible, students must complete 

a graduate degree during the 

academic year and meet specific criteria 

that speak to proven accomplishments, 

leadership abilities, and a 

commitment to a career in public 

service. Students are nominated by 


The 16 MPA graduates from the class of 2005 are: (front row, left to right): Sugeni Perez, 

Sarah Meginness, Martha King, Adrienne Corpuz Joyce, Chanthip Phongkamsavath, and 

Jessica Goldberg. Middle row (left to right): Neil Ahlsten, Newsha Dau, Barbora 

Jemelkova, Hilary Mathews, Megan Wilson, Karen Showalter, and Eileen Burke. Back row 

(left to right): Ciara Knudsen, Joe Bernath, and Shawn Johnson. 

their respective schools and undergo 

a rigorous assessment process. In previous 

years, WWS students selected 

have gone on to work in the 

Departments of State, Defense, 

Treasury, Commerce, Health and 

Human Services, the Office of 

Management and Budget, and other 

U.S. government agencies. 

This year WWS nominated 30 students 

for the program. Of these, 22 

were selected by the OPM to go forward 

to the interview round. Three 

individuals, Greg Peterson, Paul 

Belkin, and Edward Hsu, withdrew 

from the competition prior to the 

interview phase because they had 

accepted a job position or fellowship. 

WWS students were among 3,073 

nominations and 639 finalists. 

Finalists were given an opportunity 

to meet with representatives of various 

agencies at a job fair held in 

Washington, D.C. Several of the 

WWS finalists have already accepted 

PMF positions. 

Barbora Jemelkova applied for and 

accepted a position with the PMF 

program because it provides a “fasttrack” 

approach to working in the 

federal government, whose widereaching 

policies and international 

programming opportunities appealed 

to her: “The job that I will be working 

on as an environmental protection 

specialist in the Climate Change 

Division of the Environmental 

Protection Agency encourages voluntary 

participation to reduce greenhouse 

gas emissions in the the coalmining 

industry—both here and 

abroad. It feels like a great fit for me.” 

Not all students are able to find a 

position in the program that fits with 

their career path. Chanthip 

Phongkhamsavath, who concentrated 

in Field III—Development Studies, 

Jon Roemer

was accepted into the PMF program but as of 

this printing had not yet found a position. “I 

applied for the Presidential Management 

Fellowship for the opportunity to become a part 

of the federal government,” she said. “It is an 

avenue to explore the different possibilities in 

federal agencies, and discover whether there is a 

role I can play in the larger policy process.” 

Hilary Mathews had a different experience. “At 

WWS, I concentrated in Field II and earned the 

Certificate in Health and Health Policy. My 

summer internship was with CARE Rwanda, 

where I conducted a study on people living with 

HIV/AIDS. During the school year, I interned 

with and later consulted for the Millennium 

Development Goals Unit at UNDP. I knew I 

would find a position related to my interests 

through the PMF program. I will be working in 

the Office of Global Health Affairs, Department 

of Health and Human Services, as an international 

health officer. I will act as a liaison 

between HHS and the other agencies implementing 

the President’s Emergency Plan for 

AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).” 

Other students, such as M.P.A./U.R.P. student 

Sugeni Perez, had previously accepted positions 

not in the PMF realm. Perez knew that after 

graduation, she wanted to work on youth development 

and other social policy issues. She chose 

to work with the New York City-based Agenda 

For Children Tomorrow as a community and 

family engagement director, where she will help 

economically disadvantaged inner-city youth. 

The program’s Web site, www.pmi.opm.gov, 

notes that “since the inception of the original 

Presidential Management Intern Program in 

1977, over 3,500 alumni continue to serve in all 

cabinet departments and in more than 50 federal 

agencies. Many are now high-ranking federal 

officials who are changing policies and directing 

programs to meet the needs of our times.” 

Brandon Grove MPA ’52 Recounts Life and 

Times as a Career Diplomat 

Brandon Grove MPA ’52 has 

authored a new book, Behind 

Embassy Walls: The Life and 

Times of an American Diplomat 

(University of Missouri Press, 2005), 

the autobiography of a career 

American diplomat and an account of 

his role in key events of the Cold War 

era. The son of an international oilman 

and a Polish émigrée, Brandon 

Grove spent his childhood before 

World War II largely in Europe, in Nazi Germany, Holland, 

and Spain. He recounts his acquaintance with William 

Faulkner while at Bard College, his service in the Navy in 

the Korean War, and his 35-year career in the U.S. Foreign 

Service, focusing on diplomacy as practiced behind the 

scenes. 

Woven into the narrative are his observations about the 

impact of McCarthyism; the relative advantages of career 

versus political appointments to ambassadorships; the 

training of ambassadors, for which he was responsible during 

the administration of George Herbert Walker Bush; 

lawyers as diplomats; CIA stations at U.S. embassies; and 

crisis management in Washington, notably the interagency 

task force that he led in 1992 for the relief of the humanitarian 

crisis in Somalia. The author opened the first U.S. 

embassy to East Germany in 1974, served as consul-general 

in Jerusalem in the early 1980s during the war in Lebanon, 

and was ambassador to Zaire during three years of Mobutu 

Sese Seko’s infamous reign. As director of the Foreign 

Service Institute, he became largely responsible for creating 

the State Department’s permanent training center. 

In this candid personal account, Grove voices criticism of 

the Foreign Service and the State Department, while at the 

same time revealing the human face of diplomacy. He offers 

discerning assessments of such notable personalities as 

Chester Bowles; Robert Kennedy; George Kennan; Omar 

Torrijos; John Sherman Cooper and his wife, Lorraine; Philip 

Habib; Willy Brandt; Vernon Walters; Jimmy Carter; and 

Ronald Reagan, to mention just a few. He also describes 

some requisites for effective American diplomats today. 


FacultySpotlight 

Professor Aaron Friedberg Returns from 

Service as Deputy National Secuity Adviser 

Aaron Friedberg, Professor of Public 

and International Affairs at the 

Woodrow Wilson School, has 

returned to the Princeton campus 

after serving for two years in Vice President 

Dick Cheney’s office as a deputy national security 

adviser. This fall he will be teaching WWS 

549: National Security Policy. Professor 

Friedberg spoke with the WWS Office of 

External Affairs about his role in the Vice 

President’s office, current challenges to 

American and global security, and the focus of 

his research upon his return to the School. 

WWS: What role did you play during your two 

years in the Office of the Vice President? Will you 

be able to bring this experience into the curriculum 

and the courses you’ll be teaching this upcoming 

academic year? 

Aaron Friedberg (AF): At OVP my job title was 

Deputy Assistant to the Vice President for 

National Security Affairs and Director of Policy 

Planning. Because I didn’t have a specific 

regional or functional portfolio I was able to get 

involved in a wide range of issues, including 

proliferation, the war on terrorism, policy 

toward Iran and North Korea, relations with 

Russia and China, and with our major allies in 

Europe and Asia. 

My responsibility as a policy planner was to try 

to take the long view—to think out a bit 

beyond the latest developments and pressing 

crises that necessarily occupy so much of the 

government’s collective energy and attention. I 

learned a tremendous amount: about specific 

issues, the policymaking process, and the 

importance (and limitations) of intelligence. I 

also saw for myself just how hard it is to do 

meaningful mid- to long-range strategic planning. 

I expect that I will be mulling over my 

experiences for some time to come, and that 

they will shape my future research and, perhaps 

even more, my teaching, starting with WWS 

549: National Security Policy this fall. 


In general, I think we need to do more to prepare 

our students to think strategically—not 

only to analyze problems and identify desired 

objectives, but to think through what is necessary 

to achieve them, especially in situations 

where others may be pursuing very different 

goals. During my time in Washington I kept 

thinking of Clausewitz’s remark that war is “a 

contest of adversary wills.” The same could be 

said of much of international politics and, for 

that matter, of the domestic policy process. 

WWS: One of your books focused on America’s 

Cold War strategy. How do you perceive America’s 

grand strategy to have changed or evolved after the 

demise of the Soviet Union? Especially in the context 

of the rise of China, the U.S. invasions of 

Afghanistan and Iraq, and in the face of new 

threats like global terror networks? 

AF: I found that there were a number of interesting 

parallels between the period that I examined 

in my book on the Cold War and the 

problems that we face today. In the 1940s and 

1950s the United States was confronted by new, 

unfamiliar, and terrifying threats. After having 

defeated one set of enemies, the American people 

were plunged into a new era of insecurity; 

instead of feeling safer after the Second World 

War they soon found themselves feeling even 

less safe. There were sharp, sometimes bitter 

domestic debates over how best to deal with the 

new threats, and it took some time for a rough 

consensus on national strategy to emerge. 

In a relatively short period the executive branch 

of the U.S. government was restructured and 

overhauled, with vast new agencies and new 

powers—that process, too, took 10 or 15 years 

to work itself out. The early years of the Cold 

War were also a time when there appeared to be 

a sharp tension between the requirements of 

security and the necessity of preserving civil liberties 

and protecting individual freedom. 

What’s different today is that the most immediate 

threats are diffuse and hard to assess: We

know that we face the danger of terrorist 

attack, including the possibility 

of attacks with weapons of mass 

destruction. But it is very hard to 

judge how imminent that threat is 

or how well we are doing in our 

efforts to minimize it. 

It’s also true that we don’t have the 

luxury of focusing only on one set 

of strategic challenges. In addition 

to terrorism, we have to worry about 

the acquisition of weapons of mass 

destruction by irresponsible and 

aggressive states, and we also have to 

deal with profound, long-term shifts 

in the global distribution of wealth 

and power—the rise of Asia and, in 

particular, of China. 

WWS: Your research areas include 

East Asian security studies. What, in 

your view, are the most serious security 

challenges facing the region, and what 

are the most pressing U.S. policy challenges 

towards East Asia? 

AF: The most immediate dangers in 

Asia are the problems posed by North 

Korea’s relentless drive to acquire 

nuclear weapons, and the ever-present 

possibility of a conflict across the 

Taiwan Strait. Either one of those situations 

could blossom into a major 

crisis, and even a shooting war, at any 

time. Over the next several decades 

the rise of China will pose major 

strategic challenges. In the past it has 

often proved very difficult to incorporate 

fast-growing powers peacefully 

into an existing international system. 

The fact that China’s economic and 

military capabilities are expanding so 

rapidly, while its political system 

remains repressive and authoritarian, 

is cause for concern. 

Aaron Friedberg, Professor of Public and 

International Affairs 

WWS: What aspects of international 

security will you be researching upon 

returning to WWS? 

AF: Before I went into the government 

I was working primarily on 

Asian strategic issues and I plan to 

continue with that line of research. 

I’ve also been doing some thinking 

and writing about the broader problems 

of American strategy: How can 

we better integrate our efforts to deal 

with the more immediate threats of 

terror and WMD with our longerterm 

concerns? How long is the era of 

American primacy likely to last, what 

could bring it to a close, and what 

should we do with the enormous 

margin of advantage in material 

power that we currently enjoy? What 

are the obstacles and difficulties confronting 

a national strategy that aims 

to promote the spread of democracy, 

in the Middle East and beyond, and 

how can these be overcome? 

WWS: What School programs or initiatives 

will you be engaged in this 

upcoming academic year? 

AF: I would like to see Princeton 

become even stronger and more 

active in the field of strategic or 

security studies. Princeton has a long 

tradition of scholarly excellence in 

this arena extending back to before 

the U.S. entry into the Second 

World War. In many ways the problems 

we face today are as urgent and 

complicated as they were then, or at 

the start of the Cold War. In the two 

years that I’ve been gone we’ve added 

a number of outstanding new faculty 

with interests in this area and I know 

that Dean Slaughter is committed to 

building on what has already been 

accomplished. Princeton has many 

students and alumni who are concerned 

with the problems of national 

and international security. We have a 

lot with which to work. 

I came back to Princeton because I 

believe that universities have a critical 

role to play in helping to address the 

challenges we face: as centers of 

objective research, reasoned civil 

debate, and, above all, training for 

future generations of leaders and citizens. 

Especially at a time when the 

stakes are high, the problems complex, 

and the “right” answers far from 

obvious, it is important that students 

be exposed to a wide range of views 

on the issues of the day. I look forward 

to doing my bit to contribute to 

intellectual diversity at Princeton! 


Jon Roemer 

Jon Roemer 

Jon Roemer 

Tom Christensen 

Adriana Lleras-Muney 

Denise Mauzerall 

Faculty Notes 

Roland Benabou, professor of economics and public 

affairs, presented the Bank of Canada Lecture at the 

Annual Congress of the Société Canadienne des 

Sciences Economiques in Charlevoix, Canada, in May 

2005. In addition, he was named a research fellow at the 

Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn, Germany, in 

the Institute’s program on Behavioral and Personnel 

Economics. 

On July 1, Professor of Politics and International Affairs 

Tom Christensen briefed U.S. Deputy Secretary of State 

Robert Zoellick to help prepare Zoellick for the first round 

of the newly established strategic dialogue between the 

U.S. Department of State and the People’s Republic of 

China Foreign Ministry. 

Angus Deaton, the Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of 

International Affairs, and Stanley N. Katz, professor of 

public and international affairs, were among scholars and 

philanthropic experts chairing this year’s American 

Australian Association conference on Philanthropy, Ethics 

and International Aid. The event addressed the ethical 

issues surrounding philanthropy in the international community. 

The association is the largest nonprofit U.S. 

organization focused on relations between the U.S., 

Australia, and New Zealand. 

Dominic Johnson, lecturer of public and international 

affairs, co-authored two papers: with Jesse M. Bering, “O 

Lord...You Perceive My Thoughts from Afar: Recursiveness 

and the Evolution of Supernatural Agency,” for the 

Journal of Cognition and Culture (vol. 5 issue 1), for their 

special issue on psychological and cognitive foundations 

of religiosity; and with Terry Burnham, “The Biological 

and Evolutionary Logic of Human Cooperation,” for 

Analyse And Kritik (vol. 27, issue 1), a special issue on 

Ernst Fehr’s work on human altruism. In June, Johnson 

spoke at the Human Behavior and Evolution Society conference 

in Austin, Tx., on “Supernatural Punishment and 

the Evolution of Cooperation.” 

Professor of Politics and International Affairs G. John 

Ikenberry was the moderator at this year’s Sasakawa 

Peace Foundation USA (SPF-USA) seminar, 

“Remembering the Future: The Re-Nationalization of 

Japan and Its Discontents,” held in Washington. The 

event was part of SPF-USA’s seminar series “Asian 

Voices: Promoting Dialogue Between the U.S. and Asia,” 

designed to promote open communication and mutual 

understanding between Asian-Pacific countries and the 

United States on a wide range of topics. 

Assistant Professor of Economics and Public Policy 

Adriana Lleras-Muney was awarded the Ralph O. 

Glendinning University Preceptorship of Economics and 

Public Affairs by Princeton University in spring 2005. 

In August, Assistant Professor of Public and International 

Affairs Denise Mauzerall gave a talk entitled “Evaluating 

Impacts of Air Pollution in China on Public Health: 

Implications for Future Air Pollution and Energy Policies” 

and chaired a session on “Megacities” at the 

International Association of Meteorology and 

Atmospheric Sciences meeting in Beijing, China. She also 

recently published four articles: “NOx Emissions: 

Variability in Ozone Production, Resulting Health 

Damages and Economic Costs” with the late Professor 


David Bradford and others in Atmospheric Environment; 

“Estimating the Average Time for Intercontinental 

Transport of Air Pollutants” with doctoral student Junfeng 

Liu in Geophysical Research Letters; “Analysis of 

Seasonal and Interannual Variability in Transpacific 

Transport,” in the Journal of Geophysical Research with 

Junfeng Liu and Larry Horowitz; and a fourth, on present 

and future emissions of air pollutants from China, with 

doctoral student Xiaoping Wang and others in 

Atmospheric Environment. 

WWS Dean Anne-Marie Slaughter, the Bert G. Kerstetter 

’66 University Professor of Politics and International 

Affairs, was one of several speakers who addressed the 

membership of the American Law Institute (ALI) at ALI’s 

82nd Annual Meeting in mid-May, in Philadelphia. She 

was joined by Kenneth R. Feinberg, Special Master of the 

September 11th Victim Compensation Fund; Chief Judge 

Anthony J. Scirica of the United States Court of Appeals 

for the Third Circuit; and Bevis Longstreth ’56, former SEC 

Commissioner and an adviser on ALI’s Trusts 

Restatement. 

Professor of Molecular Biology and Public Affairs Lee 

Silver was interviewed by Aaron Brown on CNN on May 

20 and Ted Koppel for ABC Nightline on May 24, both on 

the topic of stem cell research and politics. In addition, 

Silver was featured in the May 29 New York Times “Week 

in Review” section in an article titled, “Does Science 

Trump All?” 

Joshua Tucker, assistant professor of politics and international 

affairs, recently published two articles: 

“Pocketbooks, Politics, and Parties: A Macro and Micro 

Analysis of the June 2003 Polish Referendum on EU 

Membership” with Radoslaw Markowski in Electoral 

Studies; and “Feeding the Hand That Bit You: Voting for 

Ex-Authoritarian Rulers in Russia and Bolivia.” with 

Amber Seligson, in Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of 

Post-Soviet Democratization. In May, Tucker participated 

in the University of Michigan’s European Union Center’s 

conference, “New Challenges for Political Parties and 

Representation;” he presented a paper entitled, “Red, 

Brown, and Regional Economic Voting: Evidence from 

Russia, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech 

Republic from 1990–99.” A second paper, co-authored by 

Tucker, “The Potency and Pliability of Nascent Political 

Orientation,” also was presented at the conference. This 

summer, he is visiting the Polish Academy of Science’s 

Institute for the Study of Politics in Warsaw, to continue 

collaborative work with Radoslaw Markowski on the 

mass politics of Poland’s accession to the European 

Union. 

Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Public 

Affairs David Wilcove contributed an article, “The 

Rediscovery of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker” to the June 

3, 2005, issue of Science magazine. In the article, Wilcove 

explains the significance of this discovery, which has 

generated considerable excitement among ecologists as 

the species has long been presumed extinct. 

Associate Professor of Politics and International Affairs 

Deborah J. Yashar recently published a new book, 

Contesting Citizenship in Latin America: The Rise of 

Indigenous Movements and the Post-Liberal Challenge.

Danielson and Wolpert, Scholars in Urban 

Policy and Planning, Earn Emeritus Status 

Michael N. Danielson 

*62, the B.C. Forbes 

Professor of Public 

Affairs and a professor 

of politics and public affairs, and 

Julian Wolpert, the Henry G. Bryant 

Professor of Geography, Public Affairs 

and Urban Planning, and chair of the 

Program in Urban and Regional 

Planning, have earned emeritus status 

after serving Princeton and the 

Woodrow Wilson School for more 

than four decades. 

Long considered one of the country’s 

leading authorities on urban policy 

and planning, Danielson, who joined 

the politics department at the School 

in 1963, paved the way for scholars 

and policymakers alike with his 1976 

groundbreaking book The Politics of 

Exclusion, which confronted the issue 

of housing discrimination in America. 

From his particular interest in the 

politics of economic development in 

urban affairs, Danielson’s research 

interests segued to urban politics and 

the political economy of sports, 

where he explored the impact that 

large-scale urban development projects 

such as conventions centers, 

sports arenas, and cultural institutions 

have on urban renewal. 

During his tenure, Danielson was 

sought out for his expertise by state 

and federal agencies, elected officials, 

and private foundations, and served 

the University in numerous capacities 

as director of the Center for 

Domestic and Comparative Policy 

Studies, faculty chair of the School’s 

Undergraduate Program, chair of the 

Department of Politics, director of 

the Center for New Jersey Affairs, 

associate dean of the WWS, and 

director of the School’s Graduate 

Program. He is also credited with the 

introduction into the graduate cur- 

Jon Roemer 

Michael N. Danielson *62, B.C. Forbes 

Professor of Public Affairs and Professor 

of Politics and Public Affairs, emeritus 

riculum of the policy workshops that 

provide an opportunity for M.P.A. 

students to apply their skills to realworld 

problems. 

Wolpert came to Princeton in 1963, 

initially serving at the University’s 

School of Architecture. In 1977 he 

was named Henry G. Bryant 

Professor of Geography, Public 

Affairs, and Urban Planning. 

Wolpert, whose combined research 

interests have focused on cartography, 

urban and regional planning, economics, 

and public policy, has written 

extensively on location theory, the 

provision and delivery of public and 

nonprofit services, urban development, 

and environmental policy. 

His most recent research activities, 

which focused on the role of the nonprofit 

sector in urban communities, 

positioned him as a leader in applying 

spatial analysis to the study of philanthropy. 

His 1993 book, Patterns of 

Generosity in America: Who’s Holding 

the Safety Net?, which studied the discrepancy 

between private support for 

the less fortunate through giving to 

charities and public support through 

Julian Wolpert, Henry G. Bryant Professor 

of Geography, Public Affairs and Urban 

Planning, emeritus 

governmental programs, was among 

his most provocative works. 

From the late 1970s to the mid- 

1980s, Wolpert served as chair of the 

Section of Political and Social 

Sciences of the National Academy of 

Sciences; chair of the Assembly of 

Behavioral and Social Sciences at the 

National Research Council; and president 

of the Association of American 

Geographers. Wolpert also served 

WWS as director of the Program in 

Urban and Regional Planning, director 

of the Undergraduate Program, 

director of the Ph.D. Program, and 

twice as director of the Graduate 

Program. 

Wolpert has also held numerous distinguished 

fellowships and foundation 

appointments, serving as adviser 

to the National Science Foundation, 

the U.S. State Department, and the 

National Institute of Mental Health; 

and at various departments within 

New Jersey state government. 


FacultyNotes 

Biological and Nuclear Weapons Proliferation 

Expert Christopher Chyba to Join WWS 

The School has announced 

that Christopher Chyba, 

noted astrophysicist and 

expert on biological and 

nuclear weapons nonproliferation, 

joined the Princeton faculty as of July 

2005. In addition to his School faculty 

appointment as a professor of astrophysics 

and international affairs, Chyba 

will initially co-direct and ultimately 

lead the WWS Program on Science and 

Global Security. Chyba has been codirecting 

Stanford University’s Center 

for International Security and 

Cooperation, where he was an associate 

professor of geological and environmental 

sciences, and held the Carl 

Sagan Chair for the Study of Life in the 

Universe at the SETI Institute in 

Mountain View, California. 

Chyba serves on the National Academy 

of Sciences’ Committee for 

International Security and Arms 

Control, the National Research Council 

(NRC) of the National Academies’ 

Committee on Advances in Technology 

and the Prevention of Their Application 

to Next-Generation Biowarfare Threats, 

and the Monterey Nonproliferation 

Strategy Group. He also chairs the 

NRC’s Committee on Preventing the 

Forward Contamination of Mars, and is 

co-director of the Princeton Project on 

National Security’s Relative Threat 

Assessment Working Group. 

His security-related research focuses on 

nuclear proliferation, nuclear weapons 

policy, and biological terrorism. Chyba’s 

planetary science and astrobiology 

research focuses on the search for life 

elsewhere in the solar system. In 

October 2001, he was named a 

MacArthur Fellow for his work in 

astrobiology and international security. 

He has lectured and written widely on 

bioweapons and biosecurity threats, as 

well as nuclear smuggling networks and 

nuclear weapons policy. 


Christopher Chyba will be a professor of 

astrophysical sciences and international 

affairs and co-direct the Program on Science 

and Global Security. 

Professor Frank von Hippel, who with 

Harold Feiveson MPA ’63, PhD ’72, 

has co-directed the WWS Program on 

Science and Global Security since its 

inception as Princeton’s Program on 

Nuclear Policy Alternatives in 1974, 

welcomed Chyba’s appointment: “My 

hope is that this program will continue 

for many years to help students and 

post-doctoral scientists from around the 

world contribute to improving policies 

for controlling nuclear and biological 

weapons,” von Hippel said. “Chris’s 

willingness to co-direct and, in a year or 

two, take over the program makes this 

hope much more realistic.” 

Feiveson added: “We are especially 

pleased that Chris’s engagement with 

and expertise in issues of biosecurity 

will immediately strengthen the program’s 

rapidly growing research in this 

area.” 

Photo courtesy of SETI 

“Chris is an outstanding addition to 

the faculty and his appointment will 

greatly augment as well as highlight 

the cutting-edge research already 

being conducted at the Program on 

Science and Global Security,” said 

WWS Dean Anne-Marie Slaughter. 

“He is one of the nation’s top experts 

on biosecurity, particularly 

bioweapons, as well as nuclear nonproliferation, 

and his research and 

teaching expertise in science and 

security issues will provide invaluable 

benefits to our students, especially 

given his policy experience.” 

Chyba served on the White House 

staff from 1993 to 1995, entering as 

a White House Fellow, working on 

the National Security Council staff, 

and then in the National Security 

Division of the Office of Science and 

Technology Policy. As a consultant after 

leaving the White House, Chyba drafted 

President Clinton’s directive on 

responding to emerging infectious diseases, 

and authored a report on preparing 

for biological terrorism. In 1996, he 

received the Presidential Early Career 

Award, “for demonstrating exceptional 

potential for leadership at the frontiers 

of science and technology during the 

21st century.” He chaired the Science 

Definition Team for NASA’s Europa 

Orbiter mission, a mission to search for 

an ocean beneath the icy crust of 

Jupiter’s moon Europa, and served on 

the executive committee of NASA’s 

Space Science Advisory Committee, for 

which he chaired the Solar System 

Exploration Subcommittee. 

A graduate of Swarthmore College, 

Chyba studied as a Marshall Scholar at 

Cambridge University and received his 

Ph.D. in planetary science from Cornell 

University in 1991.

Jon Roemer Sameer Khan 

Slaughter, Ikenberry Contribute 

Foreign Policy Vision to 

Blogosphere 

Anne-Marie Slaughter, dean of the 

Woodrow Wilson School, and G. John 

Ikenberry, the School’s Albert G. Milbank 

Professor of Politics and International Affairs, 

have joined the blogosphere via TPMCafe.com, 

a self-described "[cyber] public meeting place 

to read about and discuss politics, culture and 

public life in the United States." The site hosts 

both blogs and public discussion areas: Via 

TPMCafe’s "America Abroad" blog, found on 

the Web at americaabroad.tpmcafe. com, 

Slaughter and Ikenberry join international 

affairs luminaries Ivo Daalder of the Brookings 

Institution, James Lindsay of the Council on 

Foreign Relations, and New York Times writer 

George Packer, in analyzing and opining on 

current issues in foreign affairs. 

Slaughter, an international 

lawyer and expert on 

international institutions 

and American foreign 

policy, is the author of A 

New World Order 

(Princeton University 

Press, 2004) and numerous 

academic articles; 

she also contributes frequently to leading 

newspapers and magazines. 

Ikenberry is the author 

of After Victory: 

Institutions, Strategic 

Restraint, and the 

Rebuilding of Order after 

Major War, which won 

the 2002 Schroeder- 

Jervis Award for best 

book in international history 

and politics. A book of his essays, Liberal 

Order and Imperial Ambition, will be published 

next year by Polity Press. He is currently writing 

a book on the crisis of America’s liberal 

international order. 

Jason Kamras ’95 Honored as 

National Teacher of the Year 

Jason Kamras ’95, a Teach 

for America alumnus, was 

named National Teacher of 

the Year and recognized as 

the best in the nation by 

President Bush at a White House 

ceremony in the Rose Garden on 

April 20. Kamras, a math teacher 

at the John Philip Sousa Middle 

School in Washington, D.C., is 

the first teacher from a District of 

Columbia public school to receive 

the honor since the contest’s inception 

in 1952. 

For nearly a decade Kamras has been 

teaching at the southeast middle 

school, which is located in an area 

wracked with socioeconomic challenges, 

where kids enter the school 

through metal detectors, and more 

than 90 percent of the 380 students 

qualify for a free or reduced-price 

lunch. 

Despite a scarcity of resources and a 

shortage of staff, Kamras has sought 

out creative ways to tap into his students’ 

potential and sense of selfworth—bringing 

in a large cookie to 

teach circumference, diameter, and 

radius; instituting class trips; encouraging 

his students to take photos of 

their community and arranging to 

display them in city offices; taking 

Maya Gilliam, D.C.P.S. 

President George W. Bush welcomes Jason 

Kamras to the White House before presenting 

his award. 

time after school to get to know his 

students and engage them in hobbies. 

Kamras instituted an “early-bird” 

advanced math class and created a 

program that increased math instruction, 

which now serves as a model for 

other grades. As a result, test scores 

from the standardized math test 

known as Stanford 9, which historically 

had hovered at about 80 percent 

below basic, went to 40 percent 

below basic in a one-year time span. 

Teach for America’s president and 

founder Wendy Kopp ’89 said that 

Jason’s “commitment to public service 

as an undergraduate major in the 

Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton 

University led him to apply to Teach 

for America. Like most of our alumni, 

he was deeply influenced 

by his experience, so 

that what began as a twoyear 

commitment grew 

into much more than that. 

We are so proud of Jason 

for earning such a powerful 

platform for advocating 

for equity in public 

education.” 


AlumniNews 

White House Photo

GraduateProgram 

Graduate Students Engage Washington 

Policymakers on Middle East Crisis 

by Fatema Gunja MPA ’06 

In late spring, thirteen graduate 

students participating in WWS 

547: The Conduct of 

International Diplomacy, taught 

by School Diplomat-in-Residence 

Edmund Hull ’71, traveled to 

Washington, D.C., to meet with senior 

policymakers working on Middle 

East issues. The trip had four objectives: 

(1) To gain an improved understanding 

of how various actors, such 

as Congress, foreign embassies, think 

tanks, and interest groups, work to 

shape U.S. foreign policy; (2) to critically 

examine the Bush administration’s 

policy of democracy and the 

promotion of freedom in the Middle 

East; (3) to better understand the current 

dynamics and prospects of the 

Middle East peace process; and (4) to 

expand career development networks 

with policymakers in Washington. 

In the course of the trip, students met 

with: 

• Ambassador Marc Grossman, former 

Under Secretary for Political 

Affairs, U.S. Department of State 

• Ambassador William Burns, former 

Assistant Secretary of State for Near 

Eastern Affairs, U.S. Department of 

State 

• Representative Jim Kolbe (R-AZ), 

Chairman, Subcommittee for Foreign 

Operations, Export Financing, and 

Related Programs 

• Ambassador Nabil Fahmy, Egyptian 

Ambassador to the U.S. 

• Ambassador Farid Abboud, 

Lebanese Ambassador to the U.S. 

• Ellen Laipson, President and CEO 

of the Henry L. Stimson Center 

• Said Hamad, Deputy Director of 

the PLO Mission to the U.S. 

• Raphael Danziger, Director, 

Research & Information and Editor, 


Students who participated in the WWW 547 trip include Ylber Bajraktari MPA ’06, Drew 

Blakeney MPP ’05, Arthur Boutellis-Taft MPA ’06, Fatema Gunja MPA ’06, Danny Harris 

MPA ’06, Nick Holt MPA ’06, Richard Johnson MPA ’06, Ilan Jonas MPA ’06, David Malkin 

MPA ’06, Jane Rhee MPA ’06, Megan Selmon MPA ’06, Bart Szewczyk MPA ’06, and Earle 

Trott NES ’05. In addition to Ambassador Hull they were accompanied by Faculty Assistant 

Cynthia Ernst. 

Near East Report, American-Israel 

Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) 

• Perry Cammack, Democratic Staff 

on the Middle East, U.S. Senate 

Foreign Relations Committee. 

Students utilized the series of meetings 

to gain an insider’s view of how 

various actors influence U.S. foreign 

policy and to gauge future prospects 

for peace and democracy in the 

Middle East from the perspectives of 

both American and foreign officials. 

As Ambassador Hull noted, 

“Diplomacy, in a significant way, is 

about trips—by presidents, secretaries 

of state, envoys, or academics.” 

Egypt’s Ambassador to the United 

States Nabil Fahmy opened his presentation 

to the WWS team with the 

observation that the class’s “presence 

here [in Washington] is an investment. 

Everyone else in Washington is 

too busy talking and not listening.” 

Ambassador William Burns noted, 

“This is a moment of remarkable turmoil 

and change in the Middle East. 

In much the same way that the late 

1980s and 1990s were taken up with 

the challenges of transforming the former 

Soviet Union, the current and 

next few decades will be filled with 

the same challenges in the Middle 

East.” 

Burns laid out four key areas for U.S. 

policymakers in the region: achieving 

a lasting peace between Israelis and 

Palestinians; successfully handling 

reconstruction efforts in Iraq; defusing 

the links between terrorism and 

weapons of mass destruction; and 

supporting homegrown efforts for 

political and economic reform. He 

stressed the need for the U.S. to move 

quickly in all these areas, quoting 

comedian Will Rogers for emphasis: 

“Sometimes you can be pointed in the 

right direction, but if you don’t move 

fast enough, you can get run over.”

Emphasizing this sense of urgency, 

Congressman Jim Kolbe discussed his 

commitment to foreign assistance and 

the Bush administration’s priorities in 

the Middle East. He also stressed the 

need for congressional oversight, 

accountability, and learning from past 

mistakes. “Huge tactical mistakes were 

made right from the beginning” on 

planning for reconstruction in Iraq, 

Kolbe said. “I’m not sure if the administration 

learned any lessons from this. 

I hope they have.” 

Kolbe and Senate Foreign Relations 

Committee staffer Perry Cammack 

both acknowledged the bitter partisanship 

that exists in Washington, but 

noted that their committees were 

among the least partisan because the 

leadership worked hard to forge productive 

relationships across party lines. 

“Congress and the legislative process is 

all about personal relationships, not 

skills,” Kolbe said, while Cammack 

made the observation that the 

Democrats on the Senate Foreign 

Relations Committee have the most 

impact when they work with the 

administration rather than fight it. 

However, he also stressed that for 

influencing Congress, constituent 

voices were the most effective. “Five 

personal letters are more influential 

than 100 form faxes,” he said. 

“Democracy really does work on an 

individual level.” 

Asked about the role of interest 

groups, including lobbyists and think 

tanks, in the political process, 

Cammack called them a good source 

of information. The Stimson Center’s 

Ellen Laipson echoed this point, saying 

that “think tanks facilitate the flow 

of information between academia and 

the government and between the press 

and policymakers. Sometimes they are 

a source of new ideas, and sometimes 

they are the testing ground for new 

ideas.” 

Understanding this key point has been 

one of the reasons that groups like 

AIPAC, which invented the concept of 

grassroots lobbying, have been so successful, 

according to AIPAC’s Raphael 

Danziger, who noted that Fortune 

magazine ranks AIPAC in the top five 

most effective lobbying groups in the 

U.S., out of some 13,000 such groups. 

Danziger attributed AIPAC’s success 

mainly to the fact that a solid majority 

of Americans support Israel and that 

the Jewish-American community is 

educated, affluent, and politically 

engaged, evidenced in Congress by the 

fact that 11 Senators and 35 

Representatives are Jewish. AIPAC’s 

main task is to support foreign aid to 

Israel, and in the process, Danziger 

said, it supports the President’s entire 

foreign policy budget, not just aid to 

Israel. “If AIPAC were not so vocal on 

foreign aid,” he asserted, “it would be 

cut everywhere around the world.” 

To gain a Palestinian perspective, the 

students also visited the Palestinian 

Liberation Organization (PLO) 

Mission in Washington, a foreign mission 

with no diplomatic status, which 

is registered in the U.S. as a foreign 

agent. The PLO acts a liaison between 

the Palestinian Authority and the U.S. 

government and is focused on using 

the “road map” as the vehicle for peace 

between Israelis and Palestinians. 

Mission Deputy Director Said Hamad 

emphasized the need for the U.S. to 

act as a third-party broker of peace 

between the two entities, insisting that 

only the U.S. could facilitate a true 

peace settlement. He also discussed the 

upcoming Israeli withdrawal from 

Gaza. “We’re not going to stand 

against the Gaza disengagement, but 

does it have a political horizon?” he 

GraduateProgram 

asked. “Is it going to be followed by a 

West Bank disengagement? If not, we 

have left the road map.” 

Lebanon’s Ambassador Farid Abboud 

discussed the assassination of former 

Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, 

and Syria’s then-upcoming withdrawal, 

claiming that “everyone is happy with 

what happened in Lebanon ,but it has 

nothing to do with Iraq or Libya.” 

The students ended the trip by dining 

with Ambassador Marc Grossman, 

who discussed the exciting opportunities 

available to WWS students interested 

in careers with the U.S. State 

Department. He observed how much 

the role of diplomats had changed in a 

generation. "During the Cold War, it 

was our senior officials in Moscow and 

Washington who were the faces of 

American diplomacy," Grossman said. 

"Today, foreign service officers, mostly 

young ones, on the ground in the 

Middle East and other hot spots, are 

on the front lines." 

To prepare for this trip, in addition to 

their regular coursework, students met 

with various Middle East experts at 

Princeton including Eric Schwartz 

MPA/JD ’85, formerly with the 

National Security Council and currently 

a lecturer of public and international 

affairs in the Woodrow Wilson 

School; Julie Taylor, assistant professor 

of Near East studies; and L. Carl 

Brown, professor emeritus of Near 

East studies. 


CentersSpotlight 

Catherine B. Walsh of 

Rhode Island KidsCount 

discussed possible 

solutions to the racial and 

ethnic readiness gap in 

school-age children. 

Sameer Khan 

“Future of Children” Practitioners Conference— 

School Readiness: Closing Racial 

and Ethnic Gaps 

by Ginger Moored MPA ’06 

When Princeton graduate students 

joined preschool and kindergarten 

teachers and administrators 

from throughout the tri-state region in 

Dodds Auditorium on March 11, it wasn’t for 

remedial lessons. Instead, M.P.A. students 

Christine Bischoff, Viany Orozoco, Ginger 

Moored, Jessica Goldberg, Jamie Olson, 

Sugeni Perez, Colleen Quinn, and doctoral 

candidate Ty Wilde, along with more than 

100 educators joined researchers to discuss 

school readiness at a conference organized 

in conjunction with the release of the first 

edition of The Future of Children journal. The 

research presented in the journal addressed 

sources and consequences of racial and 

ethnic differences in school readiness. 

So the question is, what happens when academics 

and practitioners collide? After 

teaching in an inner-city high school for two 

years, I was a bit skeptical about the outcome. 

From my view, academics and practitioners 

lived in totally different worlds. As a 

teacher I had to deal with kids in 12th-grade 

physics who couldn’t add fractions, kids 

who missed weeks of school because they 

stayed home to take care of siblings, and 

endless disruptions in the classroom, 

including the occasional firecracker set off 


in front of the class. And what do academics 

deal with on a daily basis? I figured not 

much—maybe the occasional elevator outage 

or a regression that seemed amiss. 

I couldn’t have been more wrong. The conference 

gave other WWS students and me 

the balance we were seeking when we 

started our graduate studies in public policy. 

On the one hand, the conference allowed us 

to connect with practitioners who deal daily 

with the struggles of creating the best 

classroom and school environments possible. 

In fact, I met two mothers in Trenton 

who were trying to start their own magnet 

elementary school. They said their biggest 

obstacles to opening the school were competing 

race- and class-based interests in 

their city. I could immediately relate to their 

concerns not only because I faced the same 

problems teaching in an all-black high 

school in D.C. but also because I’ve analyzed 

the same topics in my metropolitan 

politics and urban and regional planning 

classes. On the other hand, I felt that the 

academics’ research findings empowered 

the practitioners; the academics discussed 

various policies that could help make the 

practitioners’ jobs easier. 

More specifically, in the morning session 

Future of Children editors and WWS professors 

Christina Paxson and Cecilia 

Rouse, Columbia professor Jeanne 

Brooks-Gunn, and contributing author 

Jane Waldfogel explained the 

methodology and conclusions of the 

journal articles. They outlined different 

factors contributing to the racial 

and ethnic readiness gap—such as 

differences in health, socioeconomic 

status, and childhood care—and proposed 

policy solutions to address 

these factors. Conference participants 

then asked the researchers 

how their policy suggestions could 

address immediate concerns in 

classrooms and schools. One princi-

Sameer Khan 

pal, for instance, asked how he could 

increase parental involvement at his school. 

The academic panelists answered by offering 

examples from best-practices research, 

which includes evaluations of programs like 

Head Start, and from their studies on parenting 

practices. Meanwhile, other teachers 

and principals talked about incentives they 

used to draw parents into schools, such as 

community dinners. 

The open discussion allowed practitioners 

to learn from and encourage each other, 

and the collaborative atmosphere continued 

throughout the afternoon’s breakout sessions. 

For these sessions, practitioners gave 

presentations on the practices they had 

found worked best in closing the childhood 

readiness gap. Topics included creating 

effective preschool programs, easing the 

transition between preschool and kindergarten, 

providing health services in schools, 

and promoting stronger links between children, 

their families, schools, and the broader 

community. 

My classmates and I each attended a different 

session, and then joined Professor 

Rouse to discuss the main themes that 

seemed relevant to each of the discussions. 

The issues of communication among every 

one involved in a 

child’s transition to 

school—parents, 

teachers, child care 

providers, and community 

members— 

was one such recurring 

idea. Another 

was the need for 

ongoing evaluation 

of student progress 

and teacher effectiveness. 

Usually, 

students facing a 

professor are there 

to listen and take 

notes, but this time, Professor Rouse was 

doing the note taking! As we summarized 

the sessions we had attended, she put 

together closing remarks for the conference. 

We finished just in time, and were 

pleased that the educators seemed to feel 

comfortable that their ideas had been heard 

and appreciated. 

Members of the audience were given the opportunity to ask specific questions 

about the problems associated with racial and ethnic differences in school 

readiness. 

For all of us, this conference was a preview 

of things to come, and an affirmation of our 

belief that learning to analyze policy can 

help us contribute to those real-world 

issues that we think are important. We were 

reminded of the multiplicity of specific 

issues that policy analysts must keep in 

mind if their work is to be really relevant, 

and encouraged by the potential for change 

when analysts and practitioners come 

together to share and apply their experiences. 

The conference, “School Readiness: Closing 

Ethnic and Racial Gaps” was co-sponsored 

by The Future of Children, the Education 

Research Section, the Policy Research 

Institute for the Region, and the Woodrow 

Wilson School. Information on the School 

Readiness journal issue can be found on the 

journal’s Web site at www.futureof 

children.org. 

CentersSpotlight 


Research Center 

and Program News 

The Center for Research on Child Wellbeing (CRCW) and the Woodrow Wilson School co-hosted Jason 

DeParle, senior writer at the New York Times, who spoke on April 11 on his book, Three Women, Ten Kids 

and a Nation’s Drive to End Welfare. The lecture, “American Dream,” focused on issues covered in his book, 

including the downside and consequences of welfare reform. 

On June 29 CRCW research staff member Michelle DeKlyen held the first public event to disseminate 

research information from the Newark Fragile Families project, as reported in the spring issue of WWS 

News. This forum of community stakeholders was held at the Joseph C. Cornwall Center for Metropolitan 

Studies on the Rutgers–Newark University campus. Participants received a copy of the first-year report providing 

detailed information on a cohort of at-risk parents and children in families living in this city. The Center 

for Research on Child Wellbeing is pleased to announce that the Fund for New Jersey has approved a second 

year of financial support for this project. 

WWS students in the Future of Children Journal Seminar, taught by Elisabeth Donahue, were invited to 

attend the Future of Children’s journal authors’ conference on the topic of childhood obesity in April 2005. 

Prior to the conference, students were given the opportunity to read and critique academic papers submitted 

to the journal for the upcoming issue dealing with childhood obesity. Students learned the process of formulating 

and refining an academic argument prior to the publishing of the journal. Students then attended the 

authors’ conference, which brought together the authors of the papers, editors of the journal, and outside 

experts, all of whom offered critiques of the papers. Class critiques were not included in the sessions, but 

students were invited to listen to the discussions, and to ask questions and offer opinions. 

The Center for Globalization and Governance (CGG) has announced the arrival of its first group of Fellows. 

They are Cristina Bodea, a Ph.D. candidate in economics at the University of Rochester; Joshua Busby, a 

postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Nancy Brune, 

a Ph.D. candidate in political science at Yale University; Mark Copelovitch, a Ph.D. candidate in government 

at Harvard University; Tonya Putnam, a Ph.D. candidate in political science at Stanford University and a 

MacArthur affiliate at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford; Alberto Simpser, a 

Ph.D. candidate in political science at Stanford University; and Barbara Walter, an associate professor at the 

University of Chicago. The fellows will pursue their own research during their year at WWS, and have the 

opportunity to present their research during the weekly CGG seminars. In addition to the fellows, guest 

speakers in economics, history, politics, and sociology who have an interest in globalization issues will participate 

in the seminar series. Additional information about the fellows and the weekly seminars can be 

found at www.wws.princeton.edu/cgg. 

CGG, the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS), and the Research Program in 

Political Economy (RPPE) co-sponsored the semiannual meeting of the working group “Political Institutions 

and Economic Policy.” Organized by Helen Milner and Tom Romer, the included several sessions that focused 

on campaign rhetoric, voting and legislative decision-making pertaining to party fiscal policy choices; fiscal 

centralization in the 20th century and the impact of territorial provisions of public goods and services; and 

studying osteological data as a means of determining the relationship of nutrition to economic status and 

political economy. 

The Princeton Project on National Security (PPNS) held its public forum over Princeton Reunions weekend. 

The event, which convened alumni who are experts in the field of foreign policy and foreign affairs, was 

designed to share PPNS working-group ideas and observations on issues pertaining to grand strategic 

choices; relative threat assessment; state security and transnational threats; economics and national security; 

reconstruction and development; anti-Americanism; infrastructure and institutions; and economics and 

national security. Gary Bass, Liz Colagiuri, G. John Ikenberry, Hal Feiveson, and Anne-Marie Slaughter were 

among the presenters. 

18 Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs

WWS Graduate Students Write 

Philadelphia’s Universal Health Care Plan 

At noon on May 11, 2005 at 

Philadelphia City Hall, 

Philadelphia Health 

Commissioner John 

Domzalski announced the release of the 

city’s Universal Health Care Plan, developed 

by graduate students at WWS 

under the tutelage of Walter Tsou, a former 

Philadelphia health commissioner 

and a lecturer at the School. 

The plan, titled “Decent Health Care for 

All in Philadelphia: Local Leadership and 

Action,” recommends that the city create 

a Health Leadership Partnership (HLP), a 

new, nonprofit organization that mobilizes 

and assists public- and private-sector leaders to 

develop strategic plans to better coordinate and integrate 

health services in Philadelphia, in order to 

guarantee decent health care for all, particularly the 

city’s underserved populations. The HLP would 

“increase access to decent health care for all 

Philadelphians by engaging all elements of the community, 

government, and local health system for collaborative 

planning and action, to develop coordinated 

and integrated systems of care,” according to the 

plan’s executive summary. 

In November 2003, Philadelphia voters approved a 

city charter change that required the Philadelphia 

Department of Public Health to “prepare a plan for 

universal health care that permits everyone in the 

City of Philadelphia to obtain decent health care.” 

The Philadelphia Health Department commissioned 

the School to write this plan. Tsou led the fall 2004 

Graduate Policy Workshop “Philadelphia Health 

Care Reform,” which featured the participation of 

six WWS M.P.A. candidates, including David 

Grande MPA ’05, a medical doctor and former 

intern at the Philadelphia Department of Public 

Health. The plan is likely to have broad local, state, 

and national significance on access to health care. 

GraduatePolicyWorkshop 

The city of Philadelphia has formed an Advisory Committee to discuss 

implementation of the University Health Care Plan developed by the 

WWS policy workshop under the guidance of Walter Tsou. 

Tsou and the six graduate students methodically 

studied how the health care safety net is structured 

in Philadelphia, examining various components of 

the system including hospital-based care, ambulatory 

care, specialty services, and the city’s mental health 

system. Workshop participants interviewed local 

stakeholders, community groups, and health officials, 

invited speakers to the Princeton campus to 

offer local expertise on various aspects of the system, 

and joined a series of community roundtables in 

Philadelphia, led by Tsou. 

“I am indebted to David Grande, M.D., and his 

team from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public 

and International Affairs at Princeton University for 

developing a plan that is both practical and visionary,” 

Philadelphia Health Commissioner John 

Domzalski noted in the plan’s executive summary. 

“The plan draws upon the varied experiences of 

other cities and counties that have developed strategies 

to address the issues of the uninsured. The plan 

also provides an illuminating history of Philadelphia’s 

long-standing efforts to address health disparities and 

the consequences of a national health policy that 

does not ensure decent health care for all.” 

continued on page 20 


www.gettyimages.com

GraduatePolicyWorkshop 

WWS Graduate Students Write 

Philadelphia’s Universal Health Care Plan 

continued from page 19 

Each fall, the Woodrow Wilson School 

sponsors six to eight graduate policy workshops 

to investigate a policy issue for a realworld 

client. The Philadelphia health care 

reform workshop, with the Philadelphia 

Health Department as its client, explored 

the strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities 

for universal health care in Philadelphia 

and examined how other American cities 

address the issue of their uninsured population, 

especially cities that, like Philadelphia, 

do not have a public hospital, such as 

Boston, Detroit, Milwaukee, San Diego, 

and Tampa. 

The objectives of the HLP, according to the 

report, include developing strategies to 

improve the financing of care for vulnerable 

populations within Philadelphia, and facilitating 

efforts to integrate the health system 

and “safety net” to provide access to decent 

health care for all regardless of insurance 

status. It calls on the Health Commissioner 

to identify a HLP Chairperson to jointly 

oversee an HLP Working Group, working 

collaboratively with the city’s HLP Advisory 

Committee on Universal Health Care. The 

report recommends a one- to two-year 

development period consisting of activities 

such as grant-writing and fund-raising, 

establishment of a plan-related legal organization 

and structure, promoting the mission 

of HLP, and forming a Board of 

Directors. 

The report further highlights potential 

HLP initiatives, including strategies to 

improve financing of universal health care 

in the city through the maximization of 

Medicaid funds or granting incentives to 

businesses that offer health insurance. The 

plan also suggests the creation and implementation 

of a care coordination and man- 


agement program that links providers so 

that they can more efficiently and effectively 

deliver health care to the uninsured. 

Uwe Reinhardt, a professor of economics 

and public affairs at the Wilson School and 

a renowned health care economist, wrote 

the foreword to the report, noting that 

“the United States stands alone as the only 

industrialized nation without some form 

of universal health coverage for its 

citizens....Local initiatives thus have 

become the core of American health policy 

in the 21st century. Their result will be the 

’outcomes’ by which the nation as a whole 

will be judged.” 

Philadelphia’s Advisory Committee on 

Universal Health Care, consisting of key 

local stakeholders and community leaders, 

began meetings on May 17 to discuss 

implementing the plan’s recommendations. 

The plan is available on the Web at 

www.phila.gov/health/finalplan_5.5.05.pdf.

Candidates’ “Face Value” Could 

Influence Voter Behavior 

Taking politicians 

purely at “face 

value” can frequently 

predict 

their success in elections, 

according to a study by the 

School’s Alexander Todorov 

and other Princeton 

researchers, which was published 

in the June 10 issue 

of Science. 

Participants who were asked 

to choose which political 

candidate in a race seemed 

more competent—based 

solely on the candidates’ 

photos—accurately predicted 

the outcome of 71.6 percent 

of U.S. Senate races in 2000, 

2002, and 2004. 

The findings suggest that fast, unreflective 

decisions can contribute to voting choices, 

which are widely assumed to be based primarily 

on rational and deliberate considerations, 

the researchers said. 

“The findings are striking—I didn’t believe 

them at first,” said Todorov, an assistant 

professor of psychology and public affairs. 

“I think that a lot of inferences that we 

make about other people are fairly automatic 

and can even occur outside of conscious 

awareness. The catch is that these 

inferences can influence important deliberate 

decisions.” 

The evaluations of the candidates were 

derived solely from facial appearance. 

Participants were shown black-and-white 

head shots of two candidates in 95 Senate 

races. If a participant recognized either candidate, 

the data were excluded from the 

study. 

Alexander Todorov is an assistant 

professor of psychology and public 

affairs. 

Jon Roemer 

Races involving highly 

familiar candidates such 

as Hillary Rodham 

Clinton and Richard 

Gephardt also were 

excluded. Across all 

studies, the participants 

were 843 undergraduate 

and graduate students at 

Princeton University. 

However, judgments 

from as few as 40 participants 

were sufficient to 

reliably predict the outcomes 

of the Senate 

races. 

The study also asked participants 

to look at photos 

of candidates in 600 

U.S. House races in 2002 and 2004. In 

those races, the candidates who were 

deemed more competent won the election 

66.8 percent of the time. 

In addition, the researchers asked participants 

to make judgments based on the 

photos on a variety of other traits, including 

attractiveness, honesty, trustworthiness, 

charisma, likability, extroversion, and agreeableness. 

Only their judgments on competence 

accurately predicted the outcome of 

the elections, the study found. 

Todorov, who has been an assistant professor 

at Princeton since 2002, studies social 

cognition, judgment, and decision-making. 

He conducted the study with Anesu 

Mandisodza, a former research assistant, 

and Princeton graduate students Amir 

Goren and Crystal Hall. 

FacultyResearch 


PolicyBrief 

Incarceration, Marriage, and Family Life 

The myriad consequences 

of the prison boom in 

America are becoming 

more far-reaching, affecting 

not only the incarcerated and 

their families, but also in triggering 

a major shift in family structure and 

child rearing. 

With the increase in incarceration 

among poorly educated black men 

comes a significant increase in the 

number of poor minority families 

forced to deal with the adjustment 

to the fact of an absentee father and 

partner, and significant readjustment 

upon their return. In addition, 

current statistics show a 

decrease in the pool of black males 

who are available for marriage. 

While much of this is the obvious 

result of imprisonment itself, 

researchers believe this may also be 

attributable to an increasing perception 

among urban women that this 

population of men are “high-risk,” 

for reasons stemming from the stigma 

of imprisonment, perceived 

risks of repeated criminal behavior, 

and inability to provide financially. 

Much of the research into criminal 

behavior indicates that marriage, by 

virtue of its inherent responsibilities 

and obligations, is to some degree a 

deterrent to aberrant or criminal 

behavior. Few studies, however, 

have explored the effects of incarceration 

on marriage, the prospect 

of marriage, or on family. 

Bruce Western, professor of sociology 

and faculty associate at the 

WWS Office of Population 

Research, addresses these issues in 

his recently issued study, titled 

“Incarceration, Marriage and Family 

Life,” which constitutes a chapter of 

a book Western is writing about the 

causes and effects of 

the increasing rates 

of incarceration in 

America. 


Study Description 

Western explores the 

effects of imprisonment 

on marriage 

and family, comparing 

and contrasting 

the hypotheses of 

selection and incapacitation. 

The 

hypothesis of selection 

purports that men who go to 

prison are characteristically unstable 

and lack the ability to develop and 

maintain stable two-parent families, 

which is attributable in part to low 

education, poor economic status, 

and weak self-esteem. In this scenario, 

these men would have weak 

attachments even if they weren’t 

incarcerated. In contrast, the 

hypothesis of incapacitation 

assumes that incarcerated men have 

close family and community ties 

upon entering prison. The limitations 

of incarceration, however, 

impede prisoners’ ability to maintain 

those bonds, resulting in 

increases in divorce and reduced 

numbers of marriages post-release. 

Western turns to empirical evidence 

to unravel these rival claims. In the 

case of selection, research finds that 

criminal offenders, especially poor 

urban black males, exhibit an 

inability to develop and maintain 

intimate relationships. Evidence 

also points to the perception of 

unreliability and tarnished reputation 

of this group as characteristics 

making urban women wary of exoffender 

males as potential mates. 

Bruce Western is a professor of sociology and a faculty 

associate of the Office of Population Research at WWS. 

Researchers supportive of the incapacitation 

theory point to a major 

upheaval in communication 

between the prisoner and those “on 

the outside,” weakening the incarcerated 

male’s family ties. Given the 

distance between home and most 

prisons, a small percentage of children 

are able to visit with their 

incarcerated father. The primary 

mode of communication is through 

telephone and mail. The end result 

is often a decreased commitment on 

the part of incarcerated parents to 

their children. 

Western goes on to establish a baseline 

for his study by calculating, 

first, the number of men entering 

prison married versus the number 

of men incarcerated who are not 

married; and second, the number of 

children with absentee (both married 

and unmarried) fathers. 

He utilizes data from two different 

data sets: the U.S. Department of 

Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics 

1979 National Longitudinal Survey 

of Youth (NLSY), which provides a 

nationally representative sample of 

men aged 14 to 21 in 1979, in 

which men were interviewed annually 

until 1994, then every other 

year until 2000; and the Fragile

Families Survey of Child Wellbeing, 

conducted by Princeton University’s 

Center for Research on Child 

Wellbeing (CRCW) and Columbia 

University’s Social Indicators Survey 

Center, which obtained information 

from 27 percent of the men while 

they were in prison (compared to 

7.8 percent in the NLSY study) and 

their partners. Although the latter 

data are comprehensive, Western 

cautions that the Fragile Families 

study lacks long-term statistics but 

does provide a different and valuable 

perspective. 

Both data sets are used to develop a 

correlation between (1) the number 

of prisoners who enter prison married 

and the rate of divorce after 

they are released, and (2) the number 

of prisoners who are unmarried 

when they enter prison, and their 

chances of getting married postrelease. 

Fragile Families data are also 

used to gauge the effects of former 

incarceration on women and families 

in terms of domestic violence. 

Western also introduces a number 

of control variables, or adjustments 

for factors that are seen to impact 

the likelihood of marriage or 

divorce, such as differences in race 

and education, regional differences, 

religious affiliation, criminal behavior 

vs. imprisonment, domestic violence, 

and drug use. For example, 

imprisonment reduces the marriage 

rate through the mechanism of economic 

disadvantage, where reduced 

employment due to incarceration 

makes men less attractive partners. 

If controlling for employment significantly 

reduces the estimated 

effects of incarceration, researchers 

can say that differences in employment 

between non-inmates and exinmates 

help explain the incarceration 

gap in marriage. 

Study Findings 

Western finds that the incapacitative 

effects of incarceration make it, 

not surprisingly, unlikely that men 

will get married while in prison. 

Once they are released from prison, 

the NLSY data show that black exprisoners 

are significantly less likely 

to get married than men who have 

never been incarcerated. Much of 

this difference, however, is statistically 

explained by the very low rates 

of employment among black men 

with prison records. The effects of 

incarceration on marriage among 

whites and Hispanics, on the other 

hand, were much smaller than those 

found for black men. 

Western’s analysis of NLSY data on 

the effects of incarceration on 

divorce finds the rate of divorce to 

be higher among whites and 

Hispanics, but negligible among 

blacks, though he highlights the 

fact that only a small percentage of 

blacks are married upon entering 

prison. 

His examination of the Fragile 

Families study reveals that, across 

the board, ex-inmates are more likely 

to be separated from their wife or 

partner and their children than 

non-inmates, the percentage being 

highest among blacks. Western then 

uses the data to take this a step further: 

to study, first, the number of 

ex-inmates who were not married at 

the time of their child’s birth and 

those married a year later; and, second, 

the number of former inmates 

who were married to the mother of 

their child at the time of the child’s 

birth, but were separated a year 

later. He finds an increase in separation 

between ex-inmates and the 

mother of their child during the 

child’s first year of life among 

whites and Hispanics, and a statistically 

significant increase among 

African-American males, in contrast 

to the negligible percentage increase 

found in the NLSY study. 

Policy Implications 

Black urban males account for the 

largest population in America’s prisons. 

Largely unmarried upon entering 

prison, their chances of marriage 

post-prison are among the 

lowest, compared to their Hispanic 

and white counterparts. While 

much of this can be attributed to 

unstable character traits and poor 

socioeconomic standing, research 

suggests a strong correlation 

between joblessness and rate of 

marriage. 

Factors of selection and incapacitation 

associated with ex-prisoners, 

namely, the stigma associated with 

having a prison record, low selfesteem, 

poor economic standing, 

lack of or deteriorated support systems, 

inability to find adequate 

employment, etc., affect both single 

and married felons’ own perceptions, 

and sharply color those of 

women, positioning these men as 

“undesirable” partners. 

Western’s findings support the need 

for improved educational and vocational 

initiatives in urban areas to 

reach out to men before they 

become inclined to criminal behavior. 

His findings also indicate the 

need to establish effective outplacement 

mechanisms within the prison 

system. 


PolicyBrief

FacultyNotes 

Massey Testifies Before Congress on 

Immigration, U.S. Relations with Mexico 

On May 26, Henry G. 

Bryant Professor of 

Sociology and Public 

Affairs Douglas Massey 

testified before the Subcommittee on 

Immigration, Border Security and 

Citizenship of the U.S. Senate 

Committee on the Judiciary, chaired 

by Senator John Cornyn of Texas. 

Massey appeared at the request of 

Senator Edward Kennedy of 

Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat 

on the subcommittee. 

Since 1982 Massey has co-directed 

the Mexican Migration Project 

mmp.opr.princeton.edu with his colleague 

Jorge Durand of the University 

of Guadalajara. The project, which is 

co-funded by the National Institute 

of Child Health and Human 

Development (part of the National 

Institutes of Health and the biomedical 

research arm of the U.S. 

Department of Health and Human 

Services) and the William and Flora 

Hewlett Foundation, offers the most 

comprehensive and reliable source of 

data available on documented and 

undocumented migration from 

Mexico to the United States. 

Massey told senators that he perceived 

“a fundamental contradiction 

at the heart of U.S. relations with 

Mexico. On the one hand, we have 

joined with that country to create an 

integrated North American market 

characterized by the relatively free 

cross-border movement of capital, 

goods, services, and information. 

Since 1986 total trade with Mexico 

has increased by a factor of eight. On 

the other hand, we have also sought 

to block the cross-border movement 

of workers. The United States criminalized 

undocumented hiring in 1986 

and over the next 15 years tripled the 

size of the Border Patrol while 

increasing its budget tenfold. 


Douglas S. Massey, Henry G. Bryant 

Professor of Sociology and Public 

Affairs 

“This escalation of border enforcement 

was not connected to any 

change in the rate of undocumented 

migration from Mexico,” Massey 

continued. “Rather, U.S. policymakers 

somehow hoped to finesse a 

contradiction, integrating all markets 

in North America except one—that 

for labor. This contradictory stance 

has led to continued migration under 

terms that are harmful to the United 

States, disadvantageous for Mexico, 

injurious to American workers, and 

inhumane to the migrants themselves.” 

As such, Massey emphasized to the 

subcommittee that “all we have to 

show for two decades of contradictory 

policies toward Mexico is a negligible 

deterrent effect, a growing pile of 

corpses, record-low probabilities of 

apprehension at the border, falling 

rates of return migration, accelerating 

Jon Roemer 

undocumented population growth, 

downward pressure on U.S. wages 

and working conditions, and billions 

of dollars in wasted money.” 

He laid out four key actions that 

Congress could take to reform the 

current state of U.S.–Mexico relations 

vis-à-vis immigration: 

• Create a temporary visa program 

that gives migrants rights in the 

United States and allows them to 

exercise their natural inclination to 

return home. 

• Expand the quota for legal immigration 

from Mexico, a country 

with a 100 trillion-dollar economy 

and 105 million people, to which 

the U.S. is bound by history, 

geography, and a well-functioning 

free trade agreement. 

• Offer amnesty to those children 

of undocumented migrants who 

entered the United States as minors 

and who have stayed out of 

trouble. 

• Establish an earned legalization 

program for those who entered the 

United States in unauthorized 

status as adults. 

These four measures, Massey said, 

“would enable the United States to 

maximize the benefits and minimize 

the costs of a migration that will likely 

occur in any event.” 

“The approach of management rather 

than repression will better protect 

American workers and allow Mexico 

to develop more quickly to the point 

where the forces now promoting 

large-scale migration will ultimately 

disappear,” Massey concluded.

WWS Calendar 

Tuesday, September 27, 2005 

Bowl 016, Robertson Hall, 4:30 p.m. 

Bendheim-Thoman Center for Research on Child Wellbeing/Woodrow Wilson School Speaker Series: 

“Not Married With Children: Should the Government Intervene?” 

First in a series of lectures co-sponsored by CRCW and WWS. With Kathy Edin, associate professor of sociology at the 

University of Pennsylvania and author of “Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage,” 

and Robert Doar ’83, commissioner of the New York State Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance (OTDA). For 

information on the remainder of the events scheduled, visit www.wws.princeton.edu/ pubaff. 

Friday–Saturday, September 30–October 1, 2005 

On the campus of Princeton University 

Kickoff of the 75th Anniversary of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs 

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will deliver a keynote address on Friday at 6:00 p.m. in Jadwin Gymnasium, 

speakers from the Princeton Project on National Security, and other distinguished guests will open a year-long commemoration 

of the 75th Anniversary of the Woodrow Wilson School’s founding. Local, regional, and international events continue 

throughout the year. RSVP is requested for all events. A complete listing of all events and RSVP information can 

be found at www.wws.princeton.edu/ 75thAnniversary. 

Monday, October 24, 2005 

Bowl 016, Robertson Hall, 4:30 p.m. 

The Crossroads of Religion and Politics Lecture Series: “Evangelicals and American Politics: 

Assessing the Past, Scouting the Future” 

Co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Religion and the Woodrow Wilson School, Michael Cromartie, vice president 

of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and director of the Evangelical Studies Project, will open up the annual 

Crossroads of Religion and Politics lecture series. For information on the remainder of the events scheduled, visit 

www.wws.princeton.edu/ pubaff. 

Friday–Saturday, December 2–3, 2005 

London, England 

75th Anniversary of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs European Event 

President Shirley Tilghman will highlight a two-day agenda in London celebrating the School’s 75th Anniversary. More 

information about this event can be found at www.wws.princeton.edu/75thAnniversary. 

Friday–Saturday, April 28–29, 2006 

On the campus of Princeton University 

The Princeton Colloquium on Public and International Affairs—”The Life, Teachings, and Legacy 

of Woodrow Wilson” 

A member of Princeton’s Class of 1879, the 13th President of Princeton University, Governor of the State of New Jersey, 

the 28th President of the United States—Woodrow Wilson left an indelible legacy both within the University and the 

United States. In honor of the 75th Anniversary of the School of Public and International Affairs, the fourth annual 

Princeton Colloquium will look at the life, teachings, and legacy Wilson left behind. 

Woodrow Wilson School public affairs programming will resume in September 2005. Please visit the 

public affairs Web site at www.wws.princeton.edu/events/comingevents.html for a calendar and 

complete listing of all scheduled speakers. 


Helen V. Milner Named Chair of 

Department of Politics 

Helen V. Milner, B.C. Forbes Professor of Politics and International Affairs and 

director of the Woodrow Wilson School’s Center for Globalization and 

Governance, has been appointed chair of the University’s Department of 

Politics. Milner assumed her new role on July 1, replacing Nancy G. Bermeo, 

professor of politics, who served as acting chair of the department. Christopher H. Achen, 

professor of politics, will take on the position of associate chair for the politics department. 

Milner joined WWS in 2004 as director of the Center for Globalization and Governance. 

Previously, she served as the James T. Shotwell Professor of International Relations at 

Columbia University. Milner’s teaching focuses on theories of international politics, comparative 

political economies, and relations between industrialized and developing countries. Her 

research interests include the role of political institutions in technology diffusion, democracy 

and trade policy in developing countries, and trade policy and globalization. 

Milner has received a number of academic awards and honors. Most recently she was named a 2006 Fellow of the Center of 

Advanced Study in the Social Sciences by the Juan March Foundation in Madrid, Spain. Milner received her Ph.D. from the 

Department of Government at Harvard University. 

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Jon Roemer

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