Kennedy Spearheads New Strategy

fall 2008 KENNEDY SPEARHEADS NEW STRATEGY How is power exercised and security achieved among the world’s cultures and nations? How does so much poverty and inequality persist in a world of such plenty? How is our world governed and policy most effectively made? David Kennedy ’76, Brown’s vice president of international affairs, has been posing these questions since becoming interim director at the Watson Insti- tute in July, as he leads deliberations on the Institute’s strategic growth. Kennedy calls this a transformative moment for the Institute, as a linchpin crime war of the University’s expanding interna- Peter Andreas’s new book depicts the tional agenda. Bosnian capital’s 1990s spiral into a criminalized war economy – in a setting “For over two decades, the Watson of ethnic conflict, humanitarian inter- Institute has analyzed global politics, vention, and intense media coverage. power, and society – becoming known David Kennedy Page 10. for questioning settled policy prescrip- tions, thinking outside the range of Today, with even more room for critical conventional debate, and working inquiry into the nature of security and across academic disciplines to identify the future of globalization, the Institute new causes and cures for urgent inter- is poised for growth. national problems,” he says. “Going forward, we will probe these “One of the things I’m most proud questions with increased rigor, estab- about at the Watson Institute is the lishing new collaborations with Brown extent to which we focus on history colleagues and growing the Institute’s and context, bringing deep background cohort of researchers from around the knowledge to bear on the issues we in- world,” Kennedy says. “We will apply vestigate,” Kennedy says. “For exam- the scrutiny of an even wider range of beyond terror ple, we have a much higher percentage academic disciplines. We will redouble The research project, Beyond Terror: of anthropologists, sociologists, and our commitment to making a difference Innovating Global Security and Global historians who work with us in a very by working with policymakers and gen- Media for the 21st Century, gains intimate way when we address ques- erating public-interest media. And we impetus with a major grant from the tions of global security. And that gives will innovate our teaching and mentor- Carnegie Corporation of New York. us a very special kind of perspective.” ing of graduate, undergraduate, and Page 5. 2 WWW.WATSONINSTITUTE.ORG FEATURE high school students – as rising gen- global networks to address poverty erations of leaders equipped to address and security and find the most effective the issues of their own times.” policy tools for global governance.” Kennedy has also been developing a As he advances the strategic review new initiative that will convene policy begun by former director Barbara professionals and scholars from across Stallings, who is resuming her work as academic disciplines to understand, a full-time faculty member, Kennedy improve, and influence the machinery of adds that, “It is a time which we hope global governance. will provide a basis for broad growth not only in the scope of our research, “The question ‘What can be done Vasuki Nesiah but in our own community – expand- about it?’ has always been at the ing the faculty, expanding the number forefront of our minds – making the re- of students that are involved, and search that is done here at the Institute the research is Vasuki Nesiah, a legal expanding our links with researchers real in the world,” Kennedy says. “Yet it scholar, Watson lecturer, and University and scholars across the campus and is no longer obvious precisely how one director of international affairs whose around the world.” can do something about the problems research focuses on human rights and that most concern us – whether the ethnic conflict. global environment, problems of poverty and development, or problems of The stage was set in June, with a security,” he says. “Knowing where the summer institute of younger scholars levers are, knowing how the machinery from around the world, followed by an of governance works on a transnational international conference, “After Empire: basis has become an important puzzle Global Governance Today.” Over time, that will take an interdisciplinary team the Institute is looking to add a group of researchers to unravel.” of international law specialists working in parallel with its research on develop- Kennedy, who had been teaching ment, security, and other issues. at Harvard Law School for 25 years before coming to Brown, is a lead- Visiting fellows have begun arriving at ing figure in international law whose the Institute to work in this new area, books include Of War and Law (Princ- building toward a portfolio of related eton University Press, 2006) and the undergraduate and graduate courses forthcoming Economic Development: and workshops, lectures, and publica- An Intellectual History. Coordinating tions. A detailed global governance research strategy is under development. “This is a very exciting moment for the Watson Institute,” Kennedy says. “We Read an interview Read the Watson Institute’s with Kennedy at are in the middle of a major process of rethinking, reforming, and restructur- new annual report at: www.watsoninstitute.org/ www.watsoninstitute.org/ kennedyinterview. ing to deepen our connection with the social science departments at Brown annualreport08. and to expand our capacity to build BRIEFINGS FALL 2008 3 NEWS In a lecture this month on campus, On campus and in the media, Rhodes Associate Professor Nina Tannenwald Center for International Economics spoke about nuclear weapons issues Director Ross Levine suggested that in that will face the president, who will not the United States, despite hard times only have to control “loose nukes” but ahead, “I don’t think we’re going to should act on the growing movement experience a depression.” He noted among senior US policymakers of all in mid-October that unemployment stripes for nuclear abolition. reached 25 percent during the depression of the 1930s (versus the current The input has been building for some 6 percent) and that the default rate on Advice to Next President time, since US Ambassador Richard mortgages was 40 percent (versus the Holbrooke ’62, a Brown professor at current 4 percent). Watson Institute faculty have been of- large, gave a speech last fall predicting fering a range of advice to the next US that “The next president of the United Visiting Fellow Christopher Lydon administration. States is going to inherit the worst conducted an Open Source interview opening-day hand in foreign policy in with Vanguard founder John C. Bogle In a policy paper distributed in Wash- American history.” in late September. “We broke the link ington, Visiting Fellow Catherine in the chain that relates the lender to McArdle Kelleher lays out five prescrip- To put it all in context, Gordon Wood the borrower,” Bogle said. Now, “the tions for the next secretary of state. provides his perspective as a Brown hole is very deep for the credit side of Among them: “Restore diplomacy as professor of history in a new install- the business.” Looking ahead, “no- the administration’s international instru- ment of the Institute’s Open Source body ever knows where the bottom ment of first resort.” podcast series: “Something that I think will be,” Bogle said, putting the end of our political leaders need, they should the economic crisis some two to three A white paper from the Institute and the be more humble in the face of this years away. Center for Latin American and Carib- complicated world.” bean Studies advocates: “a US foreign policy that respects the sovereignty of foreign nations.” A letter signed by Financial Crisis faculty members and over 350 other Elicits Comment scholars of the region urges the US to “renew its active support for human Institute faculty and associates have rights throughout the region.” provided alternative views on the current financial crisis as the issues have On the qualities that must be in play in multiplied and grown. the White House, on the truthdig.com website, Professor James G. Blight In late October, Institute Board Member and Adjunct Professor janet M. Lang William Rhodes ‘57 laid out a plan in recommend “(a) skepticism about the the Financial Times to help emerging utility of military solutions to politi- countries weather the storm. “The situ- cal problems; and (b) the willingness ation is deteriorating; these countries and the ability to inform and instruct should not be left adrift,” he said. the American people as to why, as Churchill once put it, ‘to jaw-jaw is bet- ter than war-war.’” 4 WWW.WATSONINSTITUTE.ORG NEWS you see this art in aesthetic terms?” he The Nuclear Dilemmas project is co-led asked. However, Gleason also stated by Associate Professor Nina Tannen- that all art becomes historicized as wald, author of The Nuclear Taboo: The the political issues that animated the United States and the Nonuse of Nu- art recede into the past. Gleason was clear Weapons since 1945 (Cambridge eventually surprised to discover the University Press, December 2007); “energy and passion” that went into the Visiting Fellow Catherine McArdle production of these works. Kelleher, a former official with the US Defense Department and National Se- Soviet artists drew upon artistic influ- curity Council; and Senior Fellow Sue Abbott Gleason ences outside the boundaries of their E. Eckert, a former assistant secretary political restrictions, he said, such of export administration and co-author A Personal Tour of Soviet Art as Russian folk art and 19th century of Countering the Financing of Terror- European art. ism (Routledge, 2007). At a curator’s lecture this fall, Watson Institute Adjunct Professor Abbott Soviet artists also made valid critiques Amid recent calls for practical national Gleason compared the exhibit of Soviet of Western societies, Gleason said.

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