Diplomatic Pouch

SIS welcomes the following new faculty to the school this fall

Gordon Adams

The U.S. Foreign Policy Program at SIS welcomes Professor Adams. Professor Adams was most recently a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. For the previous seven years, he was a Professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University and Director of the School’s Security Policy Studies Program. He was previously Deputy Director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, and served for five years as the Associate Director for National Security and International Affairs at the Office of Management and Budget, the senior White House budget official for national security. Professor Adams holds a B.A. in Political Science from Stanford University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University.

He has been an International Affairs Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and received the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service. He has testified numerous times before the Congress on defense spending and national security issues, writes frequent columns for major media outlets, including a monthly column for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and is widely quoted by national media on national security policy and budgets.

Professor Adams has published books, monographs and articles on defense and national security policy, the defense policy process (The Iron Triangle: The Politics of Defense Contracting), and on national security budgets. He is currently writing a book on the latter topic tentatively entitled Buying National Security, due for publication in 2008 by Routledge Press.

Robert Albro

Trained in political, legal and linguistic anthropology, as well as in cultural studies, Professor Albro is a widely published expert on social and indigenous movements in Latin America, transnational civil society, cultural rights frameworks and the work of cultural policy. His current research is concerned with global cultural policy making, as it meaningfully shapes the terms of globalization, where cultural claims are increasingly advanced as the basis of grassroots social justice efforts, and as culture is regularly made the subject of new national, international and multilateral legal and regulatory efforts to define and to protect it. Prof. Albro's research and writing have been supported over the years by the National Science Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the American Council for Learned Societies, among others. He also has been a Fulbright Scholar and Fellow in International Studies at the Library of Congress' Kluge Center. In 2004-2005 he was a Human Rights Fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs and a Rockefeller Humanities Fellow at the Smithsonian. Professor Albro has wide teaching experience, most recently at Wheaton College (Norton, MA), and from 2005 to 2007 at George Washington University, where he was a senior research associate in its Program on Culture in Global Affairs at the Elliott School of International Affairs. In addition to his active research and publishing, Professor Albro is presently Chair of the Committee for Human Rights of the American Anthropological Association (AAA). He serves as a member of the AAA's Science and Human Rights Coalition, and of the AAA's Ad Hoc Commission on the Engagement of Anthropology with the U. S. Security and Intelligence Communities. He also maintains an ongoing collaborative relationship, as a Research Associate, with the Smithsonian Institution's Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. Professor Albro joins the International Communication Program at SIS.

Youngshik Daniel Bong

Professor Youngshik Daniel Bong is a visiting fellow at the School of International Service. He was a Freeman post-doctoral fellow at Wellesley College and Assistant Professor of Korean Studies in the Department of Political Science at Williams College, Massachusetts. Professor Bong has also previously taught at the Elliot School of International Affairs at the George Washington University, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, the University of Pennsylvania, the Graduate School of International Studies at Ewha University, Korea and Yonsei University. He received his B.A. in political science and diplomacy from Yonsei University, and M. A. and Ph.D. in political science from the University of Pennsylvania. His research is focused on the interplay between nationalism and globalization on security issues including maritime disputes in Asia, anti-Americanism and U.S.-Korea alliance, and Asian regionalism. He is published in the Journal of Asian Studies, International Journal of Korean Studies, Korea Observer, and The Brown Journal of World Affairs. His newest work on anti-Americanism in South Korea appears in Youngshik Bong and Katharine Moon, "Rethinking Young Anti-Americanism in South Korea," in Ivan Krastev and Alan McPherson, eds., The Anti-American Century, Budapest, Hungary: Central European University Press, 2007. His current research project investigates the changing national identity of Korea in the global context, especially the marginalization of sexual minorities in democratizing South Korea.

David L. Bosco

Professor Bosco joins SIS as a faculty member in the International Politics program. Prior to being at SIS, he was a contributing writer for Foreign Policy (FP) magazine. He was senior editor at FP between 2004 and 2006. Previously, he was an attorney at the law firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton with a focus on international arbitration, litigation, and antitrust matters. Between 1996 and 1998, he served as a political analyst and journalist in Bosnia and Herzegovina and as deputy director of a joint United Nations-NATO project on refugee repatriation in Sarajevo. A former Fulbright scholar, he received his law degree from Harvard Law School, a master's degree in international relations from Cambridge University, and a bachelor's degree from Harvard University. His writings have appeared in a variety of publications, including the Washington Post, Slate, The New York Times Book Review, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal-Europe, The American Prospect, and Legal Affairs. He is currently writing a book on the U.N. Security Council. He has provided commentary and analysis for CNN, National Public Radio, Voice of America and a variety of other outlets.

Kristin Smith Diwan

Professor Smith Diwan researches political economy, the politics of the Middle East, and Islam and politics. She has presented papers on Islamic Banking, Islamist-Liberal politics in Kuwait, and cultural resistance to economic integration. She is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including a Fulbright Grant, a Mellon Fellowship, a Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship, and a Social Science Research Council NMERTA Grant. Professor Smith Diwan has also published a number of articles on the politics on the Middle East including Divided Government in Kuwait: The Politics of Parliament since the Gulf War (1999), Islamic Banking and the Politics of International Financial Harmonization (2005), and Kuwait Finance House and the Islamization of Public Life in Kuwait (2004). Her dissertation, From Petrodollars to Islamic Dollars, develops an analytic framework through which to explain the emergence of Islamic banking. Professor Smith Diwan received her Ph.D. from Harvard University and joins the CRS Program at SIS.

Gerbrand Groen

Professor Groen has served as a management consultant in global business management, human resource management and cross-cultural effectiveness for nearly 30 years. In this capacity, he has worked with numerous well known multinational corporations, such as Freddie Mac, IBM, Marriott, MCI Worldcom, Philips, Siemens, and Westinghouse. In 2006, Professor Groen co-authored a book, Titans of Saturn, with Dr. Charles Hampden-Turner. In their work, based on a study co-sponsored by NASA, the authors applied the concept of dilemma reconciliation to provide a unique insight into the highly successful international Cassini-Huygens space science mission to Saturn. Professor Groen has traveled to over 45 countries and is fluent in Dutch, English, and German as well as conversant in French. Groen received his J.D. from the University of Leiden and an MBA from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He comes to SIS after serving as an adjunct professor at American University's Kogod School of Business and joins the International Communication Program.

Akihiko Kimijima

Professor Kimijima is a Visiting Professor of International Relations at SIS for the 2007-2008 academic year. He is a Professor of Constitutional Law at Ritsumeikan University's College of International Relations in Kyoto, Japan. Professor Kimijima's research interests include international human rights, peace studies, and the role of NGOs in international affairs. His recent publications include: The Concept of Human Security and the Role of NGOs as Peacebuilder (1999), Actors and Approaches of Peacebuilding: Toward Nonviolence and Democracy in Global Society (2004), and The Peace Vision of the Japanese Constitution: How can Peace Be Achieved in East Asia (2004). Kimijima received his B.A. and M.A. in Law at Waseda University, an LL.M. from the University of Chicago, and completed a Doctoral program from Waseda University. He is a board member of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms and Japan Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms, and serves as the Co-chair of Nonviolent Peaceforce Japan.

Simon James Nicholson

Professor Nicholson has an extensive background in Global Environmental Politics and International Relations education. He has served as a lecturer and Director of Clinical Legal Education at the University of Waikato, New Zealand, has taught for the National Student Leadership Conference, and most recently was a Visiting Lecturer on the University of Virginia's Semester at Sea Program. Professor Nicholson has also been the recipient of multiple research scholarships and grants for his work in environmental politics, international relations theory, and the politics of technology. These awards have included a Fulbright scholarship and workshop grants from the Academic Council on the United Nations System (ACUNS) and the Oikos Foundation. Professor Nicholson received his Bachelor of Management Studies (BMS), Bachelor of Laws (LLB), and Master of Laws (LLM) from the University of Waikato, New Zealand, and is expecting his Ph.D. from American University's School of International Service in 2007. He currently serves as a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Institute for Strategic Studies-Ljubljana, Slovenia and is a member of the International Studies Association (Environmental Studies Section). Professor Nicholson joins the Global Environmental Politics Program at SIS.

John T. Picarelli

Professor Picarelli is an expert in transnational threats and their impact on national and homeland security. His research focuses on transnational organized crime and terrorism as an issue of international political economy and as an issue of international security.

Professor Picarelli has obtained and overseen research programs totally $1.2 million to date. His projects include the revision of curriculum at the US Border Patrol Academy, a study of the links between organized crime and fissile material smuggling, the overlap between organized crime and terrorism, how organized crime perpetrates the trafficking in persons globally, organized crime's use of information technology, the role of organized crime in peace mission areas and how transnational gangs perpetuate identity theft.

Prior to joining American University, Professor Picarelli served as an analyst at Pacific-Sierra Research Corporation, where he advised the defense and intelligence communities on organized crime, terrorism, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. He has advised numerous international organizations, government agencies and private entities on issues related to his research, including the UN, SECI, NATO, US Department of Defense, US Department of Homeland Security and the Center for Security and International Studies.

Professor Picarelli's recent publications include an article exploring the changing nature of the crime-terror nexus, a peer-reviewed chapter on organized crime as a source of terrorist financing, a peer-reviewed chapter on the history of human trafficking and a chapter exploring transnational organized crime as a security issue.

Professor Picarelli completed his Ph.D. at the School of International Service at American University in 2007. His dissertation explores the influence of historical trends on the manifestation of contemporary trafficking in persons, with special emphasis on the role of state institutions. He earned his M.A. in International Affairs from the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh, and his B.A. in International Relations from the University of Delaware.

Stephen James Randall

Professor Randall has served as the Dean of Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Calgary for over a decade. Prior to this appointment he was the Imperial Oil-Lincoln McKay Chair in American Studies at the University of Calgary and the Chairman of the Department of History at McGill University. Professor Randall's teaching and research fields include: Inter-American Relations (including U.S. – Canada); the United States, colonial to the present; and Latin American, 1800 to the present. He has published several books including, United Sates Foreign Oil Policy Since World War I (2005) and Canada and the United States: Ambivalent Allies (2002), and countless articles such as "The Tragedy of American Diplomacy Revisited" (2003), and "Integrating Canada and the United States: An Historical Framework" (2000). Professor Randall received his BA from the University of Western Ontario, and his MA and Ph.D. from the University of Toronto.

Rachel Sullivan Robinson

Professor Sullivan Robinson specializes in the sociology of gender, culture, and health in Africa. She has conducted a number of studies on population policy in Sub-Saharan Africa and published articles concerning nutrition, women's labor and sexuality. She has received numerous grants from the American Sociological Association, the Institute for Business and Economic Research and the UC Berkeley Center for African Studies and has conducted fieldwork in Namibia, Nigeria, and Senegal. Professor Sullivan Robinson is the author of a number of publications and has presented papers at numerous conferences, including The Age Pattern of First-Birth Rates among US Women: The Bimodal 1990s (2005), The Politics of Population Policy Adoption in Sub-Saharan Africa: Global Intersections with Demographic Localities (2006), and A Demographic Analysis of the Senegalese Population of Reproductive Health Care Organizations (2005). She is the coauthor of Statewide Partnerships in Women's Health: The First Year, and two manuscripts in preparation, Counting Women's Labor: A Reanalysis of Children's Net Production in Mead Cain's Bangladeshi Village and The Changing Social Meaning of Virginity throughout Twentieth Century America. Professor Sullivan Robinson received her Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, and joins the CRS division at SIS.

Mamuka G. Tsereteli

Professor Mamuka Tsereteli joined the adjunct faculty of the School of International Service at American University in Washington, DC in 2002. Since then he has regularly taught courses on International Relations of Russia and Central Eurasia. He has also taught courses on Contemporary Russia, Political Risk Analysis, Energy Security of Russia and Central Eurasia, and International Crime and U.S. Policy. Professor Tsereteli serves as an Executive Director of the America-Georgia Business Council. He previously served as an Economic Counselor at the Embassy of Georgia in Washington, covering relationships with International Financial Institutions. Since 1995 Professor Tsereteli has been involved in the promotion of the U.S. Multiple Pipeline Strategy and Energy Security. He was instrumental in facilitating the development of the South Caucasian Energy corridor, assisting major energy companies in the process of understanding the local environment, existing and potential risk factors, and communicating their needs to local governments. Professor Tsereteli is the recipient of the Swedish government's STINT grant, and developed a course on Economic Security of Nations at Uppsala University, Sweden. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the Academy of Science of Russia, an M.S. in Management from the University of Maryland University College, and an M.A. in Social and Economic Geography from the University of Tbilisi, Georgia.

Neil G. Ruiz

Professor Ruiz is a Non-Resident Fellow in Global Economy and Development at The Brookings Institution. Ruiz's research and teaching interests include comparative and international political economy, migration policy, global labor markets, the relationship between migration and development, and Southeast Asian politics. Professor Ruiz has several years of experience in policy analysis and development work as a consultant for the Asian Development Bank, a research fellow at The Brookings Institution, and a summer research associate at the Migration Policy Institute. His dissertation titled "Made for Export: Labor Migration, State Power and Higher Education in a Developing Society" generates a theory for explaining why developing countries create policies for exporting labor. Employing a detailed case study of the Philippines, his dissertation argues that the active role of the state in labor export can be explained by the lack of state control in the private market for higher education that is producing a large educated but unemployable population. He has also recently published an article on "Protecting Overseas Workers: Lessons and Cautions from the Philippines." Ruiz has been a teaching fellow in the Department of Sociology and the School of Education at Harvard University and in the Department of Political Science at MIT. Professor Ruiz is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has earned a M.S. in economic history from Oxford University and graduated Phi Beta Kappa and High Honors from the University of California, Berkeley with a B.A. in political science.