Advisory Board
Yasmine Ergas is Director of the Specialization on Gender and Public Policy and Lecturer in Discipline in International and Public Affairs. She also directs the program in Gender and Human Rights of Columbia University’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights, is a member of the Executive Committee of the University’s Institute for Research on Women, Gender and Sexuality, and is the co-convener of the Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Council at Columbia University.
A lawyer and sociologist, she has worked on issues regarding gender and women’s rights as a policy analyst and advisor, scholar and advocate. She has served as a consultant to international and domestic policy organizations, including the OECD, UNESCO, the Millennium Villages Project, the New York City Commission on Human Rights, and CENSIS, a major applied social research institute in Italy, and been on the staff of the Social Science Research Council.
Contributions:- Served on the Advisory Board from 2019-2020
- Authored for Print issue Vol 67.1 The Gender Issue (published in 2013-14)
- Interviewed by the Journal for Print issue Vol 72.2 Dynamics of Global Feminism (published in 2018-19)
Stephen Sestanovich joined SIPA's faculty in the fall of 2001 as the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of International Diplomacy. He is also the director of the International Fellows Program and the author, most recently, of Maximalist: America in the World from Truman to Obama (Knopf, February 2014).
Professor Sestanovich has had a long and diverse professional career, serving both in and out of government. From 1997 to 2001, he held the position of ambassador-at-large and special advisor to the Secretary of State on the New Independent States (NIS). In this role, he was responsible for the overall coordination of U.S. policy toward the states of the former Soviet Union, both within the State Department and with other agencies of the U.S. Government. He served as the principal public spokesman for the administration and the Department of State before Congress and the public on policy toward the NIS.
Contributions:
- Served on the Advisory Board from 2003-2020
Sharyn O'Halloran is the George Blumenthal Professor of Political Economy and Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University in New York City. A political scientist and economist by training, O’Halloran has written extensively on issues related to the political economy of international trade and finance, regulation and institutional reform, economic growth and democratic transitions, and the political representation of minorities.
O’Halloran received a BA degree in economics and political science from University of California, San Diego. O’Halloran then went on to receive her MA and PhD, also from University of California, San Diego. Her work focuses on formal and quantitative methods and their application to politics, economics, and public policy.
Contributions:
- Served on the Advisory Board from 2003-2020
Robert Jervis is the Adlai E. Stevenson Professor of International Affairs at Columbia University.
Specializing in international politics in general and security policy, decision making, and theories of conflict and cooperation in particular, his Why Intelligence Fails: Lessons from the Iranian Revolution and the Iraq War was published by Cornell University Press in April 2010. Among his earlier books are American Foreign Policy in a New Era (Routledge, 2005), System Effects: Complexity in Political and Social Life (Princeton, 1997); The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution (Cornell, 1989); Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton, 1976); and The Logic of Images in International Relations (Columbia, 1989). Jervis also is a coeditor of the Security Studies Series published by Cornell University Press. He serves on the board of nine scholarly journals, and has authored over 100 publications.
Dr. Jervis is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has also served as the president of the American Political Science Association. In 1990 he received the Grawemeyer Award for his book The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution.
Contributions:
- Served on the Advisory Board from 1989-2020
- Authored for Print issue Vol 44.1 Theory, Values and Practice in International Relations (published in 1990-91)
Richard K. Betts is the Leo A. Shifrin Professor of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University. He was Director of National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations for four years and is now an adjunct Senior Fellow there. Betts was a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution until 1990 and adjunct Lecturer at the Johns Hopkins University's Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. He also served at different times on the Harvard faculty as Lecturer in Government and as Visiting Professor of Government. Born in 1947, he received his BA, MA, and PhD in Government from Harvard University.
Contributions:
- Served on the Advisory Board from 2003-2020
Rashid Khalidi is appointed in the Department of History at Columbia University and affiliated with SIPA.
He is editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies, served as president of the Middle East Studies Association, and was an advisor to the Palestinian delegation to the Madrid and Washington Arab-Israeli peace negotiations from October 1991 to June 1993.
Contributions:
- Served on the Advisory Board from 2003-2020
Merit E. Janow is an internationally recognized expert in international trade and investment. She has extensive experience in academia, government and business, and has been deeply involved with the Asia-Pacific region for her entire life.
Janow became Dean of the faculty of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) in July 2013. SIPA is a leading school of international and public affairs in the United States, with more than 1,300 graduate students and 75 full time faculty. As Dean, she has strengthened the school by launching new programs and initiatives in the areas of technology and public policy – with a focus on cyber security and the digital economy – and central banking and financial policy. She also has grown SIPA’s faculty; supported the creation of new research centers; and completed a capital campaign and inaugurated SIPA’s second and most ambitious capital campaign.
For the past 25 years, Dean Janow has been a professor at both SIPA and Columbia Law School. She teaches graduate courses in the digital economy, international trade and investment law and policy, comparative antitrust law, and China in the global economy.
Contributions:
- Served on the Advisory Board from 2014 - 2020
Mahmood Mamdani is the Herbert Lehman Professor of Government. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1974 and specializes in the study of African history and politics. His works explore the intersection between politics and culture, a comparative study of colonialism since 1452, the history of civil war and genocide in Africa, the Cold War and the War on Terror, and the history and theory of human rights. Prior to joining the Columbia faculty, Mamdani was a professor at the University of Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania (1973-79), Makerere University in Uganda (1980-1993), and the University of Cape Town (1996-1999). He has received numerous awards and recognitions, including being listed as one of the ‘Top 20 Public Intellectuals’ by Foreign Policy (US) and Prospect (UK) magazine in 2008. From 1998 to 2002 he served as President of CODESRIA (Council for the Development of Social Research in Africa). His essays have appeared in the New Left Review and the London Review of books, among other journals.
Contributions:
- Served on the Advisory Board from 2003-2020
- Authored for Print issue Vol 62.2 Africa in the 21st Century (published in 2008-09)
Kimberly Marten is the Ann Whitney Olin Professor of Political Science at Barnard College, and a faculty member of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) and the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) at Columbia University. She is Deputy Director for Development at Columbia's Harriman Institute for Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies (serving as Acting Director in 2012/13), and a member of Columbia's Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies. She is a member of the PONARS-Eurasia network, and a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Contributions:
- Served on the Advisory Board from 2019-2020
- Authored for Print issue Vol 63.1 Pakistan & Afghanistan (published in 2009-10)
John H. Coatsworth is a leading scholar of Latin American economic and international history.
Coatsworth served as Dean of SIPA for four years before being named Provost of Columbia University in 2012, a role he held for nearly eight years. He previously served as the Monroe Gutman Professor of Latin American Affairs at Harvard University (1992–2007), where he was the founding director of Harvard's David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies and the chair of the Harvard University Committee on Human Rights Studies. Prior to his work at Harvard, Coatsworth was a member of the faculty at the University of Chicago (1969–1992). Other academic posts have included visiting professorships at El Colegio de México, the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the National University of Buenos Aires, the Instituto Torcuato di Tella in Buenos Aires, and the Instituto Ortega y Gassett in Madrid.
Contributions:
- Served on the Advisory Board from from 2008-2020
- Interviewed for Print issue Vol 66.2 The Rise of Latin America (published in 2012-13)
Jenik Radon is Adjunct Professor at the School of Public and International Affairs, Columbia University, where he teaches in the areas of sustainable natural resource development, small state development and corporate responsibility. In particular he focuses on risk and strategic management, sovereignty and human rights, especially environment, minority rights (including social license), transparency and anticorruption.
Radon is the founder Radon Law Offices and the founder and director of the Eesti and Eurasian Public Service Fellowship (and associated programs), which has provided students from Columbia, Stanford Law School and other institutions the opportunity to intern with government authorities and civil society in emerging nations across the global, including Cambodia, Ecuador, Estonia, Georgia, Mozambique, Namibia, Nepal, Philippines and Tanzania.
Contributions:
- Served on the Advisory Board from 2013-2020
- Authored for Print issues Vol 73.1 Climate Disruption (published in 2019-20), Vol 71.1 Democracy (published in 2017-18), Vol 70.2 The End of International Cooperation? (published in 2016-17) and Vol 68.1 Breaking Point: Protests and Revolutions (published in 2014-15).
Anya Schiffrin is the director of the Technology, Media, and Communications specialization at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. She teaches courses on media and development and innovation as well as the course Media, Human Rights and Social Change. Among other topics, she writes on journalism and development as well as the media in Africa and the extractive sector. Schiffrin spent 10 years working overseas as a journalist in Europe and Asia and was a Knight-Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism in 1999–2000. Schiffrin is on the Global Board of the Open Society Foundations and the advistory board of the Natural Resource Governance Institute.
Read all articles by this author
Contributions:- Served on the Advisory Board from 2008 - 2020