Department Newsletter

December 2012

• Letter from the Chair

Dear alumni, 

As the end of the year approaches, I wanted to update you on what we’ve been up to in the Politics department at UCSC. It has been a busy six months since we last wrote.

In the run-up to the 2012 election, which had enormous implications for UCSC with Proposition 30 on the ballot, the Politics department co-sponsored a forum with the Social Science Division on October 22 entitled “Elections 2012: What’s at Stake for California?” Prof. Eva Bertram moderated the panel, which was headlined by California Secretary of Natural Resources (and 1972 Merrill College alumnus) John Laird.  Listen to the podcast to hear the discussion. 

We also received over 250 applications for a job search that we are conducting for a new Assistant Professor of Global Politics and Policy. Our goal is to hire a professor who conducts problem-driven and policy-relevant research on such issues as immigration and citizenship, natural resource challenges, human security, or the politics of food. We are looking forward to the arrival of a new professor next year who will broaden our curricular offerings for undergraduates in the subfield of International Relations.

We are pleased to announce that Paul Hall, (Merrill, ’72) graduated with a B.A. in Politics (and J.D. from University of California, Berkeley), has generously provided a planned gift of $1 million for the departments of Economics and/or Politics. The gift will be used to endow a Chair in one of these departments or jointly between the two departments. Paul has also generously agreed to contribute $100,000 to the Dean's Opportunity Fund and other areas of support over a five-year period. Currently a partner at DLA Piper LLP in San Francisco, Mr. Hall is passionately involved with UCSC alumni fundraising activities, and serves on both the UCSC Foundation Board and the Board of Councilors for the Social Science Division.

We hope that you will consider a year-end gift supporting the UC Santa Cruz Department of Politics. Looking to preserve our excellent undergraduate program, your contribution will help us to attract and retain the best students and faculty, enhance academic programs, and support high impact research. It will have a direct impact on the lives of our students, support us as we build on our strengths, and reach beyond the excellence that we are known for. For more information, please visit the “Support Politics” page on our website.

Thanks for staying tuned in, and please send us your own news: politics@ucsc.edu

Keep reading below for more news from our alumni, undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty.

Sincerely,

Kent Eaton

Undergraduates in the News

 Nathaniel Cope, (College Ten, ’11) started an M.A. degree in International Political Economy at the London School of Economics.

Anna Kaiser (Cowell, ’12) moved to Rio, Brazil, where she covers local politics for a non-profit organization called Catalytic Communities. You can follow her reporting on the various local struggles that have emerged in the run up to the 2016 Rio Olympics at http://rioonwatch.org.

Senior Erin Linney (Kresge College - Politics and Environmental Studies double major) is conducting extensive research and interviews in Sonoma and Marine County for her senior paper on the politics of renewable energy and climate action plans at the local level in California.

 Senior Fernando Nuñez (Merrill College) is working this fall as an intern with the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund in Washington, D.C.

Morgan Harris (Stevenson, ’10) started an M.A. degree in Development at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London. 

Ben Gevercer (College Nine, ’12) worked for the Obama campaign in North Carolina as a volunteer, and in August moved to State College, Pennsylvania to become a field organizer for the campaign.

After her graduation, Iris Garcia (Stevenson, ’12) worked as an intern in the Live Oak Family Resource Center and is currently serving as an alumni advisor for UCSC’s Legal Education Association for Diversity (LEAD), an organization that seeks to diversify the applicant pool for law schools.

Graduate Spotlight

With support from the department and Social Science Dean Sheldon Kamieniecki, Max Tabatchnik received training in statistical analysis over the summer at the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) at the University of Michigan.

First-year student Juan Diego Prieto published an article in September in the International Journal of Transitional Justice entitled “Together After War While the War Goes On: Victims, Ex-Combatants and Communities in Three Colombian Cities.”

The Bulletin of Latin American Research has published Sarah Romano’s work on “the Contentious Politics of the Nicaraguan Anti-Water Privatization Social Movement.”

Steve Araujo is conducting dissertation field research in Argentina, where he is studying efforts by workers to recuperate bankrupt factories and to manage them through a new politics of “horizontalism.”

Faculty Update

Assistant Professor Mark Massoud received a 2012-13 Hellman Fellowship at UCSC to broaden his work on civil society and the rule of law in conflict settings. Prof. Massoud also gave invited talks this fall at the University of Notre Dame's Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, Duke University's Kenan Institute for Ethics (on international NGOs in South Sudan) and Duke Law School (on international law in authoritarian regimes).

In the last 6 months, Associate Professor Eleonora Pasotti has conducted fieldwork in Seoul for her new book Conflict and Development in Aspiring Global Cities. 

Associate Professor Ben Read has spent the fall quarter teaching U.S.-China relations at the University of California Washington Center in D.C. Over the summer he and two co-investigators completed a survey of political scientists about their field research experiences, shedding light on how people in our discipline travel to locales near and far to obtain fresh information about the political world. On November 13 he gave a talk at Johns Hopkins University on his recent book, Roots of the State: Neighborhood Organization and Social Networks in Beijing and Taipei.

Assistant Professor Roger Schoenman gave a talk at Berkeley in the Comparative Politics Workshop on the subject of his forthcoming Cambridge University Press book, Captains or Pirates? Networks, Uncertainty and Institutional Development in Emerging Markets.  His work was also published this fall in an edited volume by MIT Press entitled Small Worlds of Corporate Governance.

In August and September, Professor Kent Eaton conducted field research in Bolivia (La Paz and Santa Cruz) on the territorial conflicts that have divided the country since the election of leftist indigenous president Evo Morales. He presented the results of this research at a Conference on “Challenges of Party Building in Latin America” at Harvard in November.