Fall 2012 State & Hill: Human and Global Security

From Our Corner to the Four Corners of the Globe

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The Magazine of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy

Human and Global Security The lessons of Rwanda, Cambodia, and closer to home

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FEAT URE from the dean

hen people say ‘it’s a small world,’ they’re usually referring to life’s coincidences, but this expression also undergirds much of what we do here at the Ford School. It emphasizes our connectedness to people, cultures, and nations. Our globalized world not only exchanges goods and capital but also ideas about how governments and institutions can ensure the welfare of citizens.

This view is particularly in evidence at the International Policy Center (IPC), where Allan Stam, its new director since September, is already bringing innovative ideas to the study of global policy issues (p. 6). We’re excited about this interdisciplinary center’s direction, which increasingly reinforces the social and economic wellbeing of people and communities as crucial building blocks of secure nations.

IPC will expand its seminars on economic development and security studies and this fall the center introduced the Ford Policy Union, a forum for rigorous debate on pressing global policy issues. Recent talks have focused on U.S.– China relations, free trade, and the role of governments in thwarting grave human rights abuses.

We’re also delighted that our celebration of the legacy of President Ford is well under way. In October, as part of a University-wide tribute, we reflected on the life and legacy of iconic First Lady Betty Ford, a woman with no formal training in public policy who nevertheless had a lasting impact on some of the most significant policy issues of our time (p. 20).

State & Hill Dean: Susan M. Collins Associate Dean: Alan V. Deardorff Director of Communications/Editor: Laura K. Lee (MPP ’96) Publications Manager: Katie Trevathan Lead writers: Erin Spanier, Lillien Waller Writers: Bob Brustman, Ryan Pretzer, Jonathan Keesecker Design: Savitski Design Photographers: Peter Smith, Michigan Photography, DC Goings Printer: Print-Tech, Inc. Cover photo taken by Allan C. Stam during his research in Rwanda in 2001.

There are many more Ford-related events on the horizon, including a CLOSUPsponsored screening on January 23rd of the documentary Black and Blue: The Story of Gerald Ford, Willis Ward, and the 1934 Michigan-Georgia Tech Football Game. A panel discussion will follow, featuring Senator Buzz Thomas, grandson of Willis Ward, and Steve Ford, son of President Gerald Ford.

In the winter semester we’ll have the pleasure of welcoming Brent Scowcroft, who will join us for the unveiling of the statue of President Ford (an exact replica of the statue in the Capitol Rotunda) and Paul O’Neill, who will deliver the 2013 Ford School Commencement address. Stay tuned to our website for more updates.

This fall, our new speaker series, Policy Talks @ the Ford School, welcomed an extremely distinguished group of guests, including Michael Hayden, Douglas Elmendorf, Roger Ferguson, Glenn Loury, and Dick Costolo. We’ll begin again with a bang on January 14th with Ben Bernanke. If you’re in the Ann Arbor area (or can tune in online), you won’t want to miss this.

I hope you enjoy this issue of State & Hill. Let us know how we’re doing. We’d also love to hear about the connections you’re making in your own community.

Write to us at fspp-editor@umich.edu.

Sincerely,

Let us know what you think: fspp-editor@umich.edu, or Editor, State & Hill, Ford School, University of Michigan, 735 S. State Street, Ann Arbor MI 48109-3091

Regents of the University of Michigan Julia Donovan Darlow, Ann Arbor Laurence B. Deitch, Bloomfield Hills Denise Ilitch, Bingham Farms Olivia P. Maynard, Goodrich Andrea Fischer Newman, Ann Arbor Andrew C. Richner, Grosse Pointe Park S. Martin Taylor, Grosse Pointe Farms Katherine E. White, Ann Arbor Mary Sue Coleman (ex officio)

Susan M. Collins

Joan and Sanford Weill Dean of Public Policy

The University of Michigan, as an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer, complies with all applicable federal and state laws regarding nondiscrimination and affirmative action. The University of Michigan is committed to a policy of equal opportunity for all persons and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, marital status, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, disability, religion, height, weight, or veteran status in employment, educational programs and activities, and admissions. Inquiries or complaints may be addressed to the Senior Director for Institutional Equity, and Title IX/Section 504/ADA Coordinator, Office of Institutional Equity, 2072 Administrative Services Building, Ann Arbor, Michigan 481091432, 734-763-0235, TTY 734-647-1388. For other University of Michigan information call 734-764-1817.

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The Magazine of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy

The ongoing Eurozone experiment 4 The fortunes of the European Economic and Monetary Union

The heart of security 6 What leaders’ early life experiences might reveal about conflict

Changing the game 8 A blueprint for peace

Rules of engagement 12 Faculty take on issues in global security

Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) 14 International development interns put ideas to work

Everyday innovation 16 MPP alums work smart at USAID

In addition BA alum works to ensure prisoners’ civil rights 18 Irrepressible First Lady Betty Ford 20 The Nonprofit and Public Management Center 23 A conversation with Hank Meijer 24

Departments Faculty News & Awards 26 Class Notes 28 The Last Word 30

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The ongoing Eurozone experiment

compared the formation of the European Economic and Monetary Union to the development of the U.S. financial system.

The word experiment isn’t in the paper, but Dominguez used it in her presentation. “I called it an experiment,” she says, “because many people wondered if it were actually possible to have a monetary union without a political union. This was an experiment because it had never been done before.”

Our system in the U.S. had also been experimental at one time. In 1775, the original 13 states came together to share a single currency just as in 1999 the European Union (EU) countries came together under the euro.

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or many of us, the year 2006 was part of a different time. Our retirement accounts were increasing in value. Our house values were going up, up, up. Without much difficulty, we could borrow money to buy houses, make home improvements, or buy cars, boats, and refrigerators. Our spending was keeping the economy humming.

For lots of us, the financial future looked bright.

Now, of course, we know that this would all change within just a year. In fact, in 2006 the collapse was already underway, but at the time most of us were optimistic—hoping we were simply going through a rough patch, a slowdown of our ever-strengthening economy.

In this pre-cataclysmic year 2006, Ford School Professor Kathryn M. Dominguez presented a paper at the European Central Bank (ECB) titled “The European Central Bank, the Euro, and Global Financial Markets.” In part, the paper

The newly-formed United States, however, had a shared government to go with that shared currency. The federal government had the power to set fiscal policy and exert some economic control through taxation and government spending.

“Europeans took half of what we had done,” says Dominguez. “They took the single currency but decided not to create a national government or a national fiscal authority, whereas in the U.S. we have both state and national fiscal authorities.”

Prior to the euro’s introduction in 1999, most non-EU economists were skeptical about its success. They believed the EU countries were too dissimilar to share a currency and that the lack of central fiscal authority was a fatal flaw.

To the surprise of economists, by the time of Dominguez’s 2006 presentation to the ECB, the Eurozone experiment seemed to be working. It had opened borders between the EU countries to allow for the flow of trade, capital, and labor.

Interest rates in the EU countries were converging, as would be likely under a national fiscal authority. It seemed that the monetary union had unified the region economically, without the need for an explicit fiscal or political union.

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Kathryn M. Dominguez

It was the international banks’ decisions to purchase what turned out to be bad investments; no one forced them to buy what became known as “toxic assets.” Part of the blame lay with the creditrating agencies that, in hindsight, offered toogenerous ratings for these assets. But Dominguez doesn’t go in much for finger pointing: “There’s lots of blame to go around,” she says. There were many questionable or downright bad decisions that interacted with one another to pull down economies around the globe.

The EU countries that have fallen furthest during the global recession are some of the poorest: Greece, Portugal, Ireland, and Spain. The first three have needed and received bailouts from the International Monetary Fund and the EU; Spain looks to be next in line. The reasons the countries required help vary; in Greece and Portugal it was government over-spending, while in Ireland and Spain private debts arising from property bubbles led to the need for banking system bailouts. Poor countries like Greece were expected to benefit most from the Eurozone.

Ironically, low interest rates and the euro’s relative strength are what allowed these countries to finance deficit spending and property booms.

“I called it an experiment because many people wondered if it were actually possible to have a monetary union without a political union.”

Presciently, Dominguez concluded in her 2006 paper that “the true test of the influence of the European Central Bank and the longevity of the euro has yet to come. The U.S. Federal Reserve has proved itself able to calm financial markets and keep the U.S. economy on track even in the face of dramatic financial turbulence. It is less clear what role the European Central Bank would play if…one country or region within Europe were to go into financial crisis.”

The world was about to find out.

While Dominguez was addressing the ECB audience, what we now know is that a bubble in the U.S. housing market was bursting. The seemingly nonstop rise in the values of U.S. homes had ceased and prices had begun to slide. New construction was dropping and foreclosures increasing. By the end of August 2006, President Bush announced measures to help mortgageholders avoid default and stem the burgeoning sub-prime mortgage crisis.

Most Americans were understandably focused on the domestic implications of the unfolding crisis, but international economists like Dominguez understood that shocks to international finance reverberate across borders.

The failing sub-prime mortgage market hit international as well as domestic banks and institutions.

The U.S. financial crisis sent waves across the world, leading to a global recession. As for Europe’s troubles, Dominguez says, “The beginnings are rightly put at the doorstep of the United States. Some European banks had bought the subprime mortgage assets and some held a lot of them.”

“It wasn’t the cause of the European crisis, but it was one of the precipitating events.”

The crisis is ongoing, with new developments reported almost daily. Germany, with the most powerful economy in the EU, holds tremendous decision-making power over how Eurozone institutions respond to the troubled countries’ need for assistance. Greece, with 25 percent unemployment, has enacted four austerity packages in attempts to reduce its budget deficit and secure bailout funds from the Eurozone. Within the EU, Britain publicly debates withdrawal, and people talk about the benefits of desperate countries like Greece withdrawing from the Eurozone.

Will the euro survive? Does the significant difference between the Eurozone experiment and the United States 18th century experiment— namely the lack of a central fiscal authority— leave too little to bond the EU countries together in the face of persistent economic difficulties?

The outcome of the Eurozone experiment is uncertain. For now, the players are working to prove that where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Dominguez, along with the rest of us, wait to see if they can find the way. ■

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Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy

The heart of security New IPC director Allan Stam is taking the research center in bold new directions. His latest project on the 1994 Rwandan genocide shows, for him, what’s really at stake: how to improve the lives of citizens.

B y Erin S panier

Allan C. Stam at Lake Ruhondo in Rwanda in 2003.

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llan C. Stam , the new director of the Ford School’s International Policy Center, has been officially on duty for 27 days, and confides that he’s feeling a little behind. He doesn’t seem behind to an outsider though. He seems energetic, effusive, funny, and ambitious. He seems like he’s got his head in the game and is just about ready to reinvent it. And he seems like someone who throws himself, body and soul, into whatever he undertakes, whether that’s goose hunting in Manitoba, tackling the Himalayan range in Nepal, investigating ongoing caste-based discrimination in India, or, as is now the case, running an international policy center.

A professor of public policy and political science at the Ford School, Stam is undertaking a few new projects these days—some small, some large. He’s formalizing the school’s exceptional seminars on economic development and security studies, he’s adding a new student-organized debate series to the mix, and, on the larger side, he’s developing a bold vision for a world-class human security program at the Ford School.

A world-class program in human security would take some doing, for sure, but it would build on existing Ford School strengths, Stam explains.

Already, the Ford School is home to an impressive mix of thought leaders and practitioners in

international security, foreign trade, human rights, public health, civil society, and economic development. Human security bundles those disciplines, breaks down silos, and encourages holistic approaches that focus not on states and governments but on the overall quality of life of ordinary citizens.

While a traditional approach to security would address nation-state interests and national borders, human security recognizes that safe borders and stable regimes don’t always improve the human condition—they don’t ensure safety from crime, poverty, hunger, disease, or discrimination; and they don’t ensure freedom of speech, access to education and living-wage jobs, or economic opportunity. “From the human security perspective, we care about governments because we care that they live up to their responsibilities, that they provide for the needs of their citizens,” says Stam.

It must be said that Allan Stam has a taste for innovative, unconventional, and sometimes downright controversial approaches to security problems. That taste has taken him to the Army Special Forces, where he served for three years before earning his bachelor’s in government from Cornell; to Gujarat, India, where he helped an NGO interview 150,000 people to gauge contemporary attitudes about untouchability; and to

Focus: Human Security S T A T E & HILL

Rwanda, where he studied the 100-day civil war that left perhaps one million Rwandans dead and many more displaced or traumatized. That taste has also made it difficult for him to back away from important political science research—like his Rwanda work—merely because it uncovers uncomfortable facts.

After the Rwandan civil war, Allan Stam and Christian Davenport (now a professor of political science at Michigan), were driven to understand how the U.S. and the international community could have failed to recognize—and stop—a genocide as it was happening. Stam hoped that by clarifying what had happened, they could contribute information that would help prevent further atrocities. Instead, they stumbled across information they never expected to find and, in their words, “came to understand just how uncomfortable it can be to question conventional wisdom.”

Through careful quantitative and qualitative research, Stam and Davenport were able to reconstruct the 100-day war over time and space, illuminating the location, scale, and severity of violence against the location, scale, and military capacity of the Armed Forces of Rwanda and the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). In doing so, they discovered that both Hutus and Tutsis suffered devastating mass violence, and that the RPF led by Tutsiexpatriate Paul Kagame (Kagame was widely lauded as the savior of Rwanda and has since been elected president) not only failed to stop the violence, but likely exacerbated it.

Upper Photo: Adam Jones

Though Stam and Davenport were criticized as “genocide deniers,” and targeted with violent threats by members of Kagame’s administration and others, Kagame himself has faced mounting accusations of violating international humanitarian law, intimidating journalists, and arresting dissidents. As a former expat who grew up amidst ongoing ethnic violence and spent much of his adult life fighting, perhaps it’s not so surprising that Kagame sees threats everywhere he turns.

Borrowing insights like this one from the welldeveloped field of behavioral psychology, Allan Stam’s most recent research investigates the impact of formative life experiences on every president, dictator, king, generalissimo, and prime minister from 1875 to 2006. He’s studying 2,400 leaders in all, including Paul Kagame, of course, but also Fidel Castro, Winston Churchill, Gerald Ford, Francisco López, Nelson Mandela, Angela Merkel, and Ho Chi Minh. Stam and his collaborators have collected a vast quantity of biographical data on each of them. Did they suffer traumatic events when they were children? Did one of their parents die tragically? Did they live through a civil war? Fight in one? Grow up in poverty? Or go to boarding school?

While Stam hopes that the data set will grow, and that other scholars will use it to explore economic and social policy concerns, he and his colleagues are primarily interested in armed conflicts: how likely specific leaders are to enter into and escalate them based on their formative life experiences and the influencing constraints of their cultural and political systems.

Piled clothes of genocide victims at the Nyamata Genocide Memorial, the former site of the Nyamata Parish Catholic Church, where thousands of people were murdered in 1994.

Stam points to a paper collaborator Cali Ellis (PhD candidate) is writing about childhood traumatic experiences as an exciting example of work in progress. “A lot of these leaders had horrendous upbringings,” he says. They witnessed relatives and friends murdered, maimed, raped, and brutalized.

Stam asks, “Remember that poster from the 1960s that says, ‘war’s not healthy for children and other living things’?” He gestures in the air to illustrate a large wall poster, then folds his hands, his look intense. “Turns out it’s right.” ■

Meet Allan Stam Allan Stam and University of Pennsylvania colleague Michael Horowitz will publish Presidents, Kings, Dictators, and War with Cambridge University Press in 2013.

Stam hails from a long line of academics, writers, and military personnel who have served in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and both WWI and WWII. One ancestor was among the founders of Brown University; another of the Perkins Institute (where Helen Keller studied); another designed the department system at Harvard. Stam’s great-greatgreat grandmother, Julia Ward Howe, wrote the ”Battle Hymn of the

Republic” and his great-great grandmother, Laura E. Richards, was one of the first women to win the Pulitzer Prize.

Stam received the American Political Science Association’s highest honor for data contributions to the study of any and all forms of political conflict (2011). The International Studies Association recognized him as the best young scholar studying international relations and peace research (2004).

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Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy

Changing the game Bob Axelrod’s powerful blueprint for peace

By Erin Spanier

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e’ve all heard the dictum, an eye for an eye,

a tooth for a tooth. It’s an ancient Mesopotamian legal tradition recorded in Hammurabi’s Code and in the holy texts of many religious faiths. The concept is simple: repay insult in kind—wound for wound, stripe for stripe, even life for life.

We’ve also heard the counterargument—an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. But the two are far from mutually exclusive explains Robert Axelrod in his highly acclaimed book, The Evolution of Cooperation, which outlines a powerfully effective recipe for deescalating conflict.

“I came to this project believing one should be slow to anger,” wrote Axelrod in 1984, confessing to his surprise in discovering that quick, even-handed repayment of both kindnesses and insults, when combined with the qualities of absolute predictability and occasional generosity, actually set the stage for future cooperation. “It changed my worldview,” he says.

When the work was first published, it changed the worldview of others, too. The Wall Street Journal wrote “copies should be marked ‘urgent’ and sent to our strategic arms negotiators, to all businessmen, to all lawyers and to anyone who has to deal with anyone else—which is everyone.”

The New York Times suggested it might be “our best hope” for extricating the world from the era’s escalating arms race.

Axelrod was recognized with a MacArthur Foundation genius grant; he was inducted into the National Academy of Sciences (the youngest political scientist ever to receive that honor); and he was the first to be recognized with the Academy’s award for “behavioral research relevant to the prevention of nuclear war.”

Even today, twenty-eight years since his work was first published, Axelrod is a legendary figure known to anyone with a serious interest in conflict and cooperation. Michael Pan (MPP ’99), deputy chief of staff for United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice, has encountered diplomats,

Illustration: © 2012 Dean Rohrer, c/o theispot.com

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Robert Axelrod

political scientists, and policymakers all over the world who have studied Axelrod’s work. Pan explains that the ideas in The Evolution of Cooperation are part of the bloodstream of international negotiations. “In high-stakes diplomacy, those principles inform the strategies you employ,” he said.

How did Axelrod come to his discovery? What was so revolutionary about his work? And how has it impacted the work of scholars, diplomats, and corporations in the intervening years? Those are stories well worth the telling.

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t all begins with Axelrod’s keen interest in the

nascent field of game theory, which posits that wellcrafted thought exercises, or “games,” can not only offer analogies for understanding human behavior, but with rigorous testing and analysis of a variety of approaches, they can mimic, mirror, and predict it. A host of these games—stag hunt, hawk-dove, cake-cutting—had been designed, each with its own intriguing premise and application. The game that caught Axelrod’s attention though, and indeed the game that intrigued most political scientists of the era, was the Prisoner’s Dilemma.

Prisoner’s Dilemma—occur in thousands upon thousands of real-world situations like conflict negotiations, business agreements, trade treaties, and divorce proceedings.

So thought leaders the world over were spending an enormous amount of time and ink exploring theories about how to play the game to achieve the best possible outcome (by one 1975 count, some 2,000 articles had been written about the Prisoner’s Dilemma). Some of the proposed approaches were nice; some were nasty; and some were strategic, attempting to get away with every possible defection.

No one, though, not Bob Axelrod, not even the theorists themselves, really knew which of these strategies was superior when the parties would interact with each other over longer periods of time, allowing them to use history to build a climate of trust and cooperation. But the general sense, evinced by Bill Hamilton, arguably the most influential evolutionary biologist since Darwin, went something like this: “surely it’s proven, isn’t it, that you must always defect in that game, repeated or not?” Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom echoed this thought. Before Axelrod’s work,

Having come of age during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Cold War and its escalating arms race, and Vietnam, Axelrod hoped he might find a strategy that could avoid dangerous conflict, deescalate tensions, and foster longterm cooperation among adversarial parties.

If you’ve ever read Truman Capote’s reportorial masterpiece, In Cold Blood, you can envision the separate interrogations of Perry Smith and Dick Hickock to get a sense of the premise. In spite of their elaborately plotted alibi— an alibi they had practiced ad infinitum while on the run—both Smith and Hickock were sorely tempted to rat each other out, or defect, in exchange for a lighter sentence. If one defected, but the other did not, the snitch would win the lightest sentence and the sucker the most severe. If both defected, both would earn heavy sentences—the worst overall outcome (and, in fact, the path Smith and Hickock chose to take). But if neither defected, if both stuck to the improbable story of the girls and the motel room, if they cooperated with each other rather than with the authorities, both would benefit.

Now, no one wants two cold-blooded killers to get away with anything. Axelrod certainly didn’t. But two-player negotiations that reward cooperation—the premise of a

she wrote, “Formal theorists repeatedly demonstrated that mutual defection was the predicted outcome … there appeared to be no other solution to this depressing theoretical conclusion.”

Defection, however, was not a favorable option in ongoing relationships. Among rational actors, (excluding saints, of course), each defection sows doubt, mistrust, and similar acts of defection in what can become an endless series of escalating conflicts. Having come of age during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Cold War and its escalating arms race, and Vietnam, Axelrod hoped he might find a strategy that could avoid dangerous conflict, deescalate tensions, and

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Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy

Occasional generosity, an unexpected act of kindness even in the midst of conflict, can be an effective way to rebuild an atmosphere of trust.

Game theorists responded with all sorts of approaches.

There was Massive Retaliatory Strike, which would punish any defection relentlessly. There was Tester, which would attempt defection then back off if punished, but would defect again when least expected. There were endlessly forgiving programs. And there was one program, submitted by Anatol Rapaport, a pioneering mathematician and game theorist, dubbed simply Tit-for-Tat. This was the simplest of all programs: it cooperated on the first move, then mirrored the last move of its opponent for the remainder of the play—all 120,000 moves in Axelrod’s 200-round tournament. It was also, it turns out, the clear winner of the tournament, outscoring every other strategy.

It’s important to understand that Tit-for-Tat, the winning strategy in the tournament, never won a single game.

“It couldn’t. The best it can do is tie, or finish one point behind its opponent,” explains Axelrod. It won the tournament for another reason entirely: because it elicited cooperation from its adversaries. How? In part, because it was no pushover. Punch Tit-for-Tat? It punched you back. In fact, it punched you back so reliably that you might think twice about punching it again.

Tit-for-Tat did, however, have one major drawback: it could become embroiled in conflict with confrontational programs, and those conflicts could go on and on and on.... The missing ingredient, Axelrod learned after a second tournament, was generosity. Occasional generosity, an unexpected act of kindness even in the midst of conflict, can be an effective way to rebuild an atmosphere of trust.

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xelrod’s carefully constructed and

analyzed tournaments, and his engaging and accessible book, The Evolution of Cooperation, put an end to the mistaken belief that defection is always the best strategy in a conflict, offering military strategists a mathematically defensible reason to moderate their response to perceived aggression.

This alone would be a monumental contribution to science and society, but as with so many of the most remarkable discoveries, Axelrod’s took on new life, influencing ideas and inquiries in dozens of other fields.

Together with Bill Hamilton, Axelrod used it to explain acts of altruism among unrelated animals like vampire bats and cleaner fish and even non-sentient organisms like bacteria. Corporations have used these ideas to navigate high-stakes business negotiations. Economists have used them to determine when communities can effectively collaborate to protect rapidly declining natural resources like lobsters, salmon, and cod. Even medical researchers have been influenced by Axelrod’s theories: oncologists, for example, have worked with him to develop new experimental treatments.

Google Scholar lists 22,000 books and articles that have cited The Evolution of Cooperation, including 1,000 new citations this year alone. The range is vast—from moral history to strategic alliances, from profit sharing to medicine—and the numbers have grown larger each year as the book has been translated into new languages (eleven so far, with a twelfth, Arabic, now in the works).

Interestingly, though, Axelrod himself has moved on.

For the past several years, Bob Axelrod has devoted himself to nurturing the next generation of leaders in international policy and to new avenues of inquiry.

Among them, he explores the historical analogies that guide political decision-making, the sacred values that restrict negotiation, and promising new strategies for approaching intractable conflicts. Together with collaborators Scott Atran and Richard Davis, Axelrod travels to the Middle East every chance he gets to interview the leaders of nation states like Egypt, Israel, and Syria and powerful organizations like Hamas, Fatah, Salafi, and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.

“Could Egypt and the United States mediate a peace process between Israel and the Palestinians today?” he asks of Egypt’s new rulers, members of the Muslim Brotherhood, listening attentively to each response.

After all these years, and everything he’s accomplished, Axelrod is still searching for paths toward peace. ■

Illustration: © 2012 Dean Rohrer, c/o theispot.com

foster long-term cooperation among adversarial parties.

So Axelrod invited game theorists all over the world to submit programs for a lengthy Prisoner’s Dilemma tournament that would pit each strategy against itself, each against the others, and each against a random strategy that would cooperate or defect evenly, but unpredictably.

Please consider a gift to the Ford School Annual Fund

meet } Mackenzie Knowling 2012 annual fund intern

MPP ‘13

why UN Women }

The UN was outside of Mackenzie’s grassroots comfort zone—and that’s a good thing. On her MPP internship in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, she researched and coordinated potential partner organizations for UN Women, which seeks to begin supporting programs on leadership and participation.

what’s changed }

Now, she’s interested in how anti-poverty programs can better integrate gender.

“And then going beyond that,” says Mackenzie. “How many more women have been able to send their daughters to school? How many have running water?”

and 1, and 2… }

Working in an English-speaking environment left little opportunity to practice Amharic. A highlight was an aerobics class with Ethiopian women. “It was all taught in Amharic so I can count, and I know right and left.”

ten years down the road }

Whether in the U.S. or farther afield, Mackenzie sees herself having an impact, “changing the way people think about programs and development.”

Give at : giving.umich.edu/give/state-and-hill Photo: Lake Atitlan in Guatemala where Mackenzie served in the Peace Corps from 20o7-09.

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Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy

f o c us: Hum an Se c ur i ty

Rules of engagement How three Ford School faculty members serve the policy issues they study

Something worth fighting for The future of an arms trade treaty

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n July 2012, an eleventh hour phone call with instructions from the White House abruptly stalled passage of an all-but-complete 193-nation Arms Trade Treaty at the United Nations. Susan Waltz , professor of public policy, believes that was a mistake.

As chair of Amnesty International, Waltz helped launch the international movement for an Arms Trade Treaty. She sat on the first steering committee, helping to map the strategy for moving from a “code of conduct” to a full-fledged international treaty, and she continues to keep her hand in the game. When Amnesty International Susan Waltz is looking for a United Nations representative—to deliver testimony, participate in a panel for diplomats, or introduce a screening of Lord of War—Susan Waltz is one of the first they call.

So when Waltz says the Arms Trade Treaty is something worth fighting for, we couldn’t have it from a more knowledgeable source. Every minute of every day, someone dies as a result of irresponsible arms transfers,1 a tragedy the Arms Trade Treaty seeks to address through regulation.

“When the Soviet Union collapsed, enterprising new businessmen sold mountains of Soviet AK-47s to African nations in exchange for gold and diamonds. Those weapons fueled massacres in Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Liberia, and Darfur,” explains Waltz. But the problem isn’t just in Africa, and the weapons aren’t only from Russia and China. “In so many conflict zones where civilians are terrorized and rape has served as a war strategy, small arms have made it possible—small arms that aren’t produced locally.”

In a letter to the New York Times in August, Waltz criticized the White House for caving to the gun lobby by pulling support on the last day of a three-week negotiation.

“In bowing to the gun lobby, the Obama administration 1 Source: Amnesty International, “10 Killer Facts: The Global Weapons Trade.” http://www.amnesty.org.au/armstrade/comments/28098

Susan Waltz (far right) sits on stage with His Holiness the Dalai Lama and seven other Nobel Prize winners, including Elie Wiesel and Óscar Arias, before signing the 1997 International Code of Conduct on Arms Transfers.

passed up the opportunity to make the world a little more secure,” wrote Waltz, who will continue to work for the treaty’s passage.

Editor’s note: At press time, the United Nations unanimously approved a resolution to reconvene Arms Trade Treaty negotiations in the spring.

Mapping terror Understanding terrorist networks and alliances

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eople collaborate—it’s what we do. We work together to tackle big problems. We work together to achieve big goals. We give favors, in hopes that they’ll be reciprocated. We look out for each other, in hopes that someone else will look out for us in our moment of need.

These collaborations make us stronger, smarter, safer, and more successful.

It’s no surprise then that animals collaborate, too. Or governments. Or businesses. Or nonprofits. Collaboration is a powerful way to achieve a goal, to grow, to survive. And it’s not a problem when we’re collaborating within legal limits, but what about terrorist organizations—violent non-state actors—do we really want them to reap the benefits of collaboration? Do we want one terrorist organization teaching another how to hijack a plane, build a bomb, or kidnap a wealthy businessman?

“Organizations don’t learn to do suicide bombing by picking up the New York Times,” says Philip B. K. Potter , assistant professor of public policy and political science. “They learn from other organizations they’re closely related to, or from fighters with relationships in multiple organizations.” While traditional counterterrorism Philip B. K. Potter focuses on decapitating networks, e.g. taking out bin Laden, Potter explains, “there’s also this web of relationships between organizations, and we need to be thinking about how to disrupt that, too.”

Focus: Human Security S T A T E & HILL

John D. Ciorciari ,

assistant professor of public policy, has served as a senior legal advisor to DC-CAM since 1999.

He just finished a book manuscript on the United Nationsbacked tribunal in Cambodia and has written articles on DC-CAM’s archive and the legal challenges associated with accountability and reconciliation. Much of this work helps make the archive widely accessible. But it also supports the center’s ultimate goal of helping survivors heal.

Most archives of mass atrocities are funded by western countries and assembled, maintained, and staffed by a mix of foreigners and locals. In an ideal world, Ciorciari explains, governments would assemble and maintain their own archives.

A network map, based on data from the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT), of all known terrorist alliances in the international system.

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Potter and collaborators Erica Chenoweth (Denver) and Michael Horowitz (Penn) are embarking on a three-year initiative to illuminate these terrorist networks and alliances for the Department of Defense.

They’ll mine the Terrorism Knowledge Base and the National Counterterrorism Center database; they’ll explore publicly available news reports, declassified intelligence documents, and scholarly articles; and they’ll poll terrorism experts and interview local government officials.

After mapping known relationships between violent non-state actors, including how and why these alliances developed, how they’ve changed over time, and what flows through them—knowledge, money, weapons, fighters—Potter and his collaborators will conduct a network analysis to better understand which alliances pose the most significant threat, and to identify effective strategies for their disruption.

“That’s a foundation for liberal democracy in my view.

Knowledge about the abuses of the past helps us take measures to prevent them in the future. And, hopefully, this knowledge helps deter abuses.”

Using Cambodia and other countries as case studies, Ciorciari’s current research explores what roles international actors—foreign countries and NGOs—should play in assembling and managing archives in states emerging from mass atrocities. The research also addresses a number of issues around dissemination, including John D. Ciorciari the role of electronic media and when and how to delimit access in the interests of individual privacy and national security.

“Assembling archives is only useful if the archives are used for something—holding people accountable or teaching children,” he says. “In a society that’s been inflicted with mass suffering, children should be able to look at their mother and father and aunts and uncles and understand them as survivors.” ■

Memory and justice Assembling archives of mass atrocities

A

Photo: Tim Wessman / lossidesign.fi

woman in Cambodia recently released more than 1,000 photographs of people imprisoned by the Khmer Rouge—the genocidal Democratic Kampuchea regime that ruled the country from 1975–79.

She had worked in the regime’s prison system and, fearing reprisal for her involvement, had hidden the photos. She gave the photos to the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-CAM), but for nearly thirty years, family members didn’t know what had happened to their loved ones.

Now they know.

Photos of people imprisoned by the Khmer Rouge on display at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

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Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy

FEAT URE

Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) International development interns put ideas to work

The Maniqui River is 300 meters from where Dionisio Garcia Piriz (MPP/MA ’13) lived and worked in Bolivia.

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ne block down Hill Street, just west of State, is Ali Baba’s, a small Middle Eastern restaurant with habit-forming grape leaves and baklava.

Any day of the week, you’re sure to find a table, or two, or five filled with folks from the Ford School. On just such a visit, I met Dionisio Garcia Piriz (MPP/MA ’13), a dual degree master’s student who had recently returned from a mind-bending summer internship exploring savings habits among indigenous Tsimané (chee-MAH-nay) tribes in the lowland forests of the Bolivian Amazon. Because most Tsimané rely on barter, the question of how they save for the future—how they build a cushion to support themselves if the plantains, rice, and sweet manioc crops fail—is an intriguing one. And Piriz’s Tsimané study wasn’t a one-off; it was part of a much larger study of non-traditional savings practices among tribes all over the developing world.

Garcia Piriz’s internship was one of several that Ford School students completed this summer with Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), the leading nonprofit that tests

A flier goes up for the job fair organized

by Emily Beam as part of her research in Bulan, a municipality in the Sorsogon Province of the Philippines.

Emily Beam (PhD candidate)

and evaluates interventions designed to reduce poverty among the world’s most vulnerable populations. In the landscape of worldwide NGOs, IPA is relatively young (just ten years and counting) but it’s an increasingly powerful voice in conversations about how we improve the lives and livelihoods of the poor.

IPA’s specialty is randomized controlled trials, sometimes called demonstration trials, which are the social sciences equivalent of the pharmaceutical trials employed by the medical community.

With carefully selected test and control groups, and preand post-surveys looking not just at poverty, but at dozens of indicators of financial security and personal welfare, demonstration trials have been enthusiastically embraced by policymakers and philanthropists for their ability to pinpoint the most effective interventions. The discoveries IPA has made are exciting, too. Who knew something as simple and inexpensive as sending frequent text messages to remind families to save could help reduce their reliance on costly microloans?

Demonstration trials like those conducted

by IPA do come with a cost: they require a considerable investment of time, talent, and ‘boots on the ground’ to implement. Dean Yang , associate professor of public policy and economics at the Ford School, knows this well; he’s currently managing eight such trials in four different countries. How can one faculty member manage eight separate field studies while teaching “Economics of Developing Countries” and designing a new course on international economic development? Innovations to Poverty Action is the key. “IPA provides a tremendous service for development economics researchers everywhere by taking care of the hiring, paperwork, and logistics, allowing researchers to focus on the big ideas and the analytical aspects of development problems.”

Focus: Human Security 15

In 2011 IPA had over 300 projects completed or underway in 48 countries around the world.

As IPA interns, Ford School students coordinate many of the in-country logistics of field studies. This summer, for example, three Ford School students helped run two separate studies in the Philippines designed to boost remittances from overseas workers. In the 1980s, Filipino unemployment began spiraling out of control as a ‘60s-era population explosion added three-quarters of a million citizens to the labor force each year. There wasn’t enough time to launch campaigns to attract international corporations to the Philippines, so government officials helped Filipinos find work abroad. It was a vastly effective strategy, and one with an unintended but not unwelcome consequence: remittances.

Filipinos working abroad sent money home—to care for their aging parents, to support the education of their nieces and nephews, to help their brothers and sisters launch new businesses. Industries liked the arrangement, too—Filipinos were well educated and great workers—and as a result, it grew. “Filipino contract employees now number in the millions, work in 100 countries around the world, and send back huge amounts of resources,” says Yang.

Still, the idea of foreign contract work never permeated the entire archipelago of thousands of small islands. In many rural areas throughout the Philippines, unemployment remains a major problem. This is what inspired Yang, a Filipino himself, to launch a multiyear demonstration trial with IPA and the World Bank. His goal: to identify the most cumbersome roadblocks to international contract work among the nation’s rural poor. This past summer, Veronica Gonzales Stuva (MPP ’13) and Naomi Joseph (MPP ’13) helped roll out the third and final wave of that study, training the Filipino survey and data entry teams and overseeing the data encoding process.

Pallavi Shukla (MPP/MSW ’14), another second-year master’s student at the Ford School, helped set up a new remittance study for Yang, exploring how contributions and educational outcomes are impacted when donors can send remittances directly to a school, and receive regular grade and attendance reports Veronica Gonzales for each student they support. Emily Stuva (MPP ‘13) Beam , a doctoral candidate at the Ford School, ran a third study in the Philippines. Beam’s work explored the impact of information about labor market conditions and job fair attendance in helping overcome informational, behavioral, and psychological barriers to seeking overseas work. “The cost of such interventions is modest,” says Yang, “but if they have a positive impact, a good case can be made to scale them up elsewhere.”

Like other experiential Ford School initiatives such as the Applied Policy Seminar, the IPA internships gave students the chance to put what they’re learning into practice.

The opportunity to study poverty interventions outside the classroom is invaluable to students with an interest in international economic development, says Shalini Subbiah (MPP/MSW ’14), who spent the summer studying the impact of commitment savings programs in Ghana.

“From the Ivory Tower, it’s hard to see the confounding factors out in developing nations.” ■ Support for these internships was provided by the Ford School Alumni Board, the Neil Staebler Political Education Fund, and the Peter and Julie Borish Fund for PhD students.

“IPA provides a tremendous service for development economics researchers everywhere by taking care of the hiring, paperwork, and logistics, allowing researchers to focus on the big ideas and the analytical aspects of development problems.”

Focus: Human Security 16

Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy

f o c us: hum an se c ur i ty

Everyday innovation Ford School alumni ‘work smart’ on international development at USAID

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“

ust imagine the communities you came from if, within a six-week period of time, your schools had to double in capacity to take in refugees from a neighboring country,” proposed Rajiv Shah (BS ’95), Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) at a late September talk sponsored by ONE and hosted by the Ford School, “and you get a sense of both the scale of the challenge—and the potential—for real partnership between the United States and Jordan.”

Shah described how, as a result of dynamic systems modeling, USAID was able to build a sustainable infrastructure that will provide 30 percent of all water for nearly 1.7 million people in Jordan. USAID recently turned on a piping and pumping system in the country, he explained, which has absorbed 150,000 Syrian refugees fleeing the regime of Bashar Hafez al-Assad in search of safety, shelter, food and, yes, water.

“It’s getting more and more important,” Shah emphasized, “that we bring smarter science, smarter technology, and a smarter development practice to our work.”

And smart is the key word. Innovation often is the result of working smarter to refine existing knowledge and practices and applying them within different settings. For decades now, Ford School alumni committed to international development have joined USAID, and their work is not only smart—it’s having a notable impact.

Koziol is the point person for USAID’s engagement with the Global Partnership for Education—with GPE and other donors, Koziol is developing strategic education indicators and formulating a strategy for using resultsbased financing in the education sector. She also develops policy and provides guidance to USAID staff in the field on how to use impact evaluation to improve education programming. “There has been an incredible push, I have watched it happen,” she says excitedly, “this transition from just inputs and outputs to really caring about longterm outcomes and figuring out what works. And not just what works in one specific context but what works across contexts.”

Particularly challenging contexts are conflict and war zones. South Sudan, which only became independent in 2011 after decades of civil war, is the newest country in the world, Koziol explains. USAID is working to create an education infrastructure where none had existed. “They had no education system—they had no systems,” she says.

“We have been working in collaboration with other development organizations on strengthening their systems, creating more equitable access to education, and making certain that in a country as young and as fragile as South Sudan is, there will be generations of educated young people who will be able to sustain democratic and economic growth for the future.”

“I went to USAID because the organization had renewed its commitment to the use of evidence to inform policy and programming.

And that renewed focus, I think, is really important in a world that values learning, transparency, and accountability,” explains Maggie Koziol (MPP ’07), a policy advisor in the Office of Education.

USAID’s education strategy is threefold: improving reading (particularly in the early grades), youth and workforce development, and providing equitable access to education in countries undergoing crisis and conflict.

Sean Jones (MPP ’00) speaks with a tile shop owner in Fallujah, Iraq, about the challenges of growing his business during times of conflict and how the Iraqi government could do more to help (2006).

S T A T E & HILL

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Far left: Sean Jones (MPP ’00) during a USAID site visit to a forest community in Chiapas, Mexico.

Left: Maggie Koziol (MPP ’07) on a World Bank trip to Nepal.

Sean Jones (MPP ’00) is the deputy director of USAID’s mission in Mexico and he points out that the country, categorized as upper-middle-level income, is “more developed than the locations for typical USAID missions.” But Mexico’s challenges, particularly security along the northern border and climate change, give USAID its purpose.

Indeed, a quarter of the mission’s funding helps the government and the private sector promote policies and find resources to reduce emissions by 2025. A significant portion of USAID’s work in Mexico also involves justice reform and human rights for the most marginalized groups and reducing crime and violence in communities affected by narco-violence.

But reform doesn’t come easily. For Sean Jones and Maggie Koziol, innovation means working smarter, or cheaper, and spreading the word.

“There’s a huge push to ensure that local people and local organizations with amazing ideas . . . become a part of our USAID family.”

That’s why Jones is pleased with the agency’s recent direction, which has moved to include more organizations that traditionally might not have made it through the agency’s bureaucracy.

“There’s a huge push to ensure that local people and local organizations with amazing ideas, approaches, and complementary goals become a part of our USAID family,” he explains, noting that more of the budget in recent months has gone to local organizations that know the culture, share the passion for solving the country’s problems, and are in tune with the dynamics in the country.

In addition to the agency’s normal practice of fully supporting other organizations’ implementation efforts, USAID’s Mexico mission also offers challenge grants, which provide seed capital to partners with good ideas that align with the agency’s strategic objectives. Subsequently, those ideas can be scaled up and shared throughout the agency and the places in which they work. “In terms of innovation,” says Jones, “the grants also ensure that USAID officers stay smart with all of the great things going on in the rest of the world.” ■

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hile speaking at the University in September, Rajiv Shah (BS ’95) touted the innovative USAID-funded project piloted by Dean Yang , associate professor of public policy and economics at the Ford School. In summer 2012, USAID awarded Yang and his research team a grant for their project, “Honing help back home: Maximizing the development impact of migrant remittances.” Remittances from citizens abroad, Shah noted, outpace development aid to poor countries by more than two to one. Awarded through USAID’s Development Innovation Ventures (DIV), Yang’s project examines whether migrants might be more generous remitting their earnings if they could be sure of how the money is used. The DIV grant supports stage one of the project, which will pilot and test EduPay, an educational and financial monitoring facility that will allow Filipinos overseas to pay educational institutions back home in the Philippines directly (without an intermediary) and monitor the progress of the sponsored student.

USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah (BS ’95), speaking at the Ford School in September.

Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy

Ba Impac t

BA alum works to ensure prisoners’ civil rights Gary Graca (BA ’09)

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or Gary Graca (BA ’09), a degree in public policy was about seeing what happens out of public view.

As a paralegal in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Graca visits the inner workings of state-funded prisons and mental health facilities to ensure compliance with civil rights laws.

Much of Graca’s work is based on Olmstead v. L.C., a 1999 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that prohibits states from institutionalizing people with disabilities if they could be accommodated in community care settings. Failure to follow the Court’s “integration mandate” would be a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

“My purpose in coming to DOJ was to help people— vulnerable people—primarily with sensitive and complicated health care issues,” Graca said.

Graca’s interest in prisoners’ civil rights—particularly health care for those afflicted with mental illness—began when he was reporting on the case of Timothy Souders for The Michigan Daily. Souders, a 21-year-old diagnosed with manic depression, died of dehydration in August 2006 at the Southern Michigan Correctional Facility in Jackson, Michigan. He had spent most of four days constrained by chains to a cement slab while awaiting transfer to a psychiatric facility.

In the course of his reporting for the Daily (of which he would become editor in chief in 2009) Graca became familiar with the Office of the Independent Medical Monitor. The office had been tasked with improving medical care conditions at the Jackson facility and three other Michigan prisons after inmates filed a lawsuit in the 1980s. Graca took a summer job at the office and continued to work part-time the following

school year. By the time he was admitted as a member of the Ford School’s first class of undergraduates in 2007, Graca had a profound understanding of the need for prison reform.

“Prisons in America—well to say the least, I see this as one of America’s primary human rights issues,” Graca said.

“It’s something we spend a lot of money on to get very poor results from. It shouldn’t be that way.”

He offered some of his solutions in a term paper on prisoner re-entry initiatives for Professor Sheldon H. Danziger ’s seminar on social welfare policy.

“Gary was one of the very few students who had the depth of insight to go beyond the assignment and develop original policy recommendations,” said Danziger, who nominated Graca’s paper for inclusion in the Gramlich Showcase of Student Work. “It was the first time in many years that I gave a student a ‘100’ on a class paper.”

Graca has traveled the country since 2010 for compliance inspections, to monitor reforms already under way, and to assist legal proceedings related to possible ADA violations. He noted that prisoner health care reform is often judicially driven—prompted by lawsuits such as the one brought against the Michigan prisons. Once in state custody, prisoners and patients must often rely on their families to speak on their behalf or have no advocate at all.

And that has fueled Graca’s commitment to the cause.

“The work that I did in the facilities in Michigan solidified for me that not only is it a complicated problem, it’s one that affects people’s lives dramatically. It’s not just the people in prison who have all sorts of issues. All those people have families outside of prison,” Graca said.

“There’s a policy side to it but there’s also a human side that’s really important.” ■

Gary Graca (BA ’09) (left) was editor in chief of the Michigan Daily during his senior year, here with Nate Sandals (BA ’09) and Ben Simon (BA ’09).

Photo: Aaron Clamage/clamagephoto.com

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S T A T E & HILL

Ford School Spotlight Right: The annual Ford School staff retreat entailed a day of community service and teambuilding in Detroit, with 35 staff members in two groups volunteering at Earthworks Urban Farm, a program of the Capuchin Soup Kitchen, and Gleaners Community Food Bank, both located on Detroit’s east side.

Below: Angel Harris (PhD ’05), an associate professor of sociology and African American studies at Princeton University, visited with current Ford School doctoral students and gave our contribution to the Rackham Centennial Lecture Series, “Race, inequality, cultural deficiency narratives, and schooling.”

Bottom: Standing room only: the Domestic Policy Corps hosted lively viewing parties for the three presidential debates, encouraging earnest and intelligent discourse on the candidates, the issues, and the political process.

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Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy

a tri bute to be tt y f or d

Being ladylike does not require silence

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here are photos and movies of Betty Ford in her family home from the 1960s. They show a caring homemaker and mother, busy looking after her husband and four young children in their suburban Virginia home. In these images, she looks every inch the typical midcentury middle-class housewife.

But typical is one thing this woman was not. From her childhood until her death in 2011, Betty Ford balanced responsibility with her own expressive and lively spirit—a spirit that occasionally stretched the confines of decorum.

Betty Ford, born Elizabeth Ann Bloomer in 1918, grew up expressing herself. Her fondness for modern dance, which she studied for several years after high school, showed her flair for bold, boundary-pushing communication. She also grew up with a mother who was a role model of an independent woman: Betty Ford’s mother had supported herself and her three children by working as a real estate agent for several years after the death of her first husband.

Top: In the east wing of the White House in 1975, First Lady Betty Ford works at her desk.

Above, left: Betty Ford, a Calla Travis Dance School instructor, poses during a performance of “Fantasy” in Grand Rapids, MI in 1942.

Above, center: Betty Ford holds second son Jack while eldest son Michael plays in their apartment in Alexandria, VA in 1952.

Above, right: President Gerald Ford and First Lady Betty Ford read a get well card, signed by all 100 members of the United States Senate, at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland following the First Lady’s breast cancer surgery in 1974.

Betty Ford too, was employed. She began giving dance lessons as a teenager and continued, off and on, until she got married. She also worked as a model and later as a department store fashion buyer.

With this background, it is no surprise that when she was taken from her 1960s suburban-housewife life and thrust into the public eye in the White House, she had opinions. She cared about the status of women’s rights and opportunities in the United States. And when she found herself in a position to be influential, she was happy to speak up.

From stovetop to bully pulpit

In 1973, Gerald R. Ford (HLLD ’74, AB ’35) was serving in his 24th year as the representative from Michigan’s 5th congressional district. When Vice President Spiro T. Agnew resigned, President Richard M. Nixon appointed Ford to the vice presidency. At the ceremony announcing Gerald Ford as vice president, Nixon is said to have congratulated Betty Ford. “Congratulations? Or condolences?” she quipped.

However reluctant and surprised Betty Ford was to be thrust into the public eye, she soon began to expand the traditional role of the vice president’s spouse.

The second lady generally doesn’t receive attention from the news media; Betty Ford was different.

Photos of Mrs. Ford: Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library

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S T A T E & HILL

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She attracted attention when she volunteered to represent the administration at the funeral of Martin Luther King Jr.’s mother. She expressed controversial opinions in magazine interviews, saying that if she learned one of her children used marijuana, “I’d be understanding. I would object and try to reason with them rather than try to use force.” She told Good Housekeeping that she supported Roe v. Wade: “I’m glad abortion has been taken out of the back rooms and put into the hospitals where it belongs.”

And she spoke out in favor of women’s economic rights.

In a June 1974 speech at the Women’s Center for LifeLong Learning at Utah State University, Ford said that a third of women were sole household wage earners. She decried the wage discrepancy between men and women, a problem she said was for “our whole society, not just the individual woman.”

Betty Ford’s stage was about to be elevated. In July 1974, Nixon resigned the presidency rather than be impeached in the Watergate scandal. Gerald Ford became the president and Betty Ford became the First Lady.

Women’s health and women’s rights

In 1974 First Lady Betty Ford was diagnosed with breast cancer and had a mastectomy. Because of public sensitivity about women and their anatomy, breast cancer was a taboo disease and a diagnosis of breast cancer was often a death sentence. The Fords were forthcoming with the American public about her illness. Their candor is credited with raising the visibility of this disease and with increasing the numbers of women having mammograms and saving the lives of untold individuals.

When Betty Ford recovered, she turned her attention to the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). In 1974 five more states were needed to ratify the amendment for it to become part of the Constitution and Betty put her policy influence to bear on those remaining states.

She began a campaign of writing and calling legislators in nine states to urge passage of the ERA. In the end, Betty Ford’s efforts on behalf of the ERA were not enough to carry the day. But she continued to champion women’s rights.

In an October 1975 speech, she said: “Many barriers continue to the paths of most women, even on the most basic issue of equal pay for equal work…

The first important steps have been to undo the laws that hem women in and lock them out of the mainstream of opportunities…My own support of the Equal Rights Amendment has shown what happens when a definition of proper behavior collides with the right of an individual to personal opinions. I do not believe that being First Lady should prevent me from expressing my views.

I spoke out on this important issue, because of my deep personal convictions. Why should my husband’s job or yours prevent us from being ourselves? Being ladylike does not require silence.” ■

Susan M. Collins

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n October 11, the U-M and the Ford School hosted a tribute to the late first lady, Betty Ford, who died July 8, 2011, at age 93.

Betty Ford was remembered as a feminist, a pioneer in breast cancer awareness, and an advocate for addiction treatment.

The event included a dance performance by a Martha Graham soloist as well as speeches from Nancy Brinker, founder of Susan G. Komen for the Cure; Sanford Weill, former CEO and chairman of Citigroup; U-M President Mary Sue Coleman; and Ford School Dean Susan M. Collins.

“Throughout their 58 years of marriage and public service, they traveled to Ann Arbor many times,” Mike Ford said of his

Mary Sue Coleman

parents, the late president and first lady. “Mom came to love the University of Michigan because she loved Jerry Ford, the son of the maize and blue.”

Dean Collins noted the courage and conviction Mrs. Ford showed in voicing her opinions and sharing her struggles.

“Throughout her life, Betty Ford spoke her story—an honest, American story about childrearing, work, illness, recovery, and family,” Collins said.

Collins encouraged students to look to Mrs. Ford as inspiration and example. “Speak out. Find your conviction. Tell your story.

Your work, your impact, and your service might be just the living legacy that President Ford and the irrepressible Mrs. Betty Ford would most have treasured.”

Michael Ford

Sanford Weill

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Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy

M PP Internshi p s

How I spent summer 2012 Monica Cox (MPP ’13):

Disaster Accountability Project; Washington, DC; Christina Hajj (MPP ’13): Center for Defense Management Research, Navel Postgraduate School; Monterey, California; Pooja Bhatt (MPP ’13): Education Pioneers: Los Angeles Unified School District; Los Angeles, California; Stephanie Zamorano

(MPP ’13): Public Policy Institute of California; Sacramento, California

Top Marisa Fortuna (MPP ’13)

(with U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Anthony E. Wayne): Economic and Environment, Science, Technology and Health Section, U.S. Embassy; Mexico City, Mexico Middle Sarah Zarate (MPP ’13)

(far right): Mercy Corps; Washington, DC, and Ethiopia Bottom Haven Allen (MPP ’13/ Science, Technology, and Public Policy certificate) (with Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel): Office of the Mayor; Chicago, Illinois

Top Andrew Bracken (MPP ’13): Integrated Child Development Services, Government of the State of Bihar; Patna, India

Middle Vanessa Kargenian

(MPP ’13) (far right): Federal Reserve Bank of New York Bottom Adrienne Call (MPP/

MSW ’13) (far left): Centro Vivir Con Diabetes; Cochabamba, Bolivia

Ford School Spotlight S T A T E & HILL

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Having an impact now

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hen Jeff Kessner (MPP/MUP ‘14) joined the Nonprofit and Public Management Center (NPM) last year, he knew he would learn a lot about how nonprofits work. But he didn’t know that he would soon be on the board of one.

“I was a Board Fellow last year, and this year they asked me to join the board as a full voting member. So I am actually on the board now as a member and as a peer mentor for the five new Board Fellows.”

Kessner is referring to NPM’s popular Board Fellowship Program, which places students with local nonprofits as non-voting board members so they can gain hands-on experience with nonprofit management. It is just one of several programs run by NPM—a partnership between the Ford School, the Ross School of Business, and the School of Social Work.

“I think the idea of a board, and the board being the primary vehicle through which an organization is governed, is very unique,” Kessner said. “And I don’t think enough people have an understanding of what that means.”

President Ford’s family poses with his No. 48 jersey at the Michigan Football Legend ceremony before the start of the October 13 homecoming game against Illinois. The jerseys of six legends—Ford, Ron Kramer, Bennie Oosterbaan, and Wistert brothers Francis, Albert, and Alvin—were returned to circulation this fall and will carry a patch honoring each player.

Jeff Kessner (MPP/MUP ’14)

As a fellow, Jeff joined Nonprofit Enterprise at Work (NEW), a group that provides organizations with management expertise and training.

He developed a system for collecting feedback from Ann Arbor area clients and helped update the organization’s board governance process.

EPA Administrator Susan Hedman met with a small group of master’s students from the Ford School and the School of Natural Resources and Environment to discuss careers in sustainability and environmental policy.

Ford School faculty Marina Whitman and Megan Tompkins-Stange represent the Ford School on NPM’s Faculty Steering Committee, led by Ross School professor David Hess. The committee is currently developing new strategic goals and plans for expansion.

“We aim to sustain and build on the center’s outstanding team-based, student-oriented programming while also expanding our support of faculty research and course development on issues related to nonprofit management and social innovation,” Tompkins-Stange said of the center’s work.

Kessner has two more years of graduate school to earn his dual degree in public policy and urban planning. But if his work with NPM is any indication, that won’t stop him from having an impact now.

“Just because you are in grad school doesn’t mean the real world stops, and that there’s not a need for your skills now.” ■

Ford pride on the Great Wall: (Front row, L-R) Kristine Hartman (MPP ’13), Aili Zhou (MPP ’13), Tina Wei (MPP/MS ’13), Pallavi Shukla (MPP/MSW ’13), Sokunpanha You (MPP ’13) and (Back row, L-R) Phil Potter, Sharif Sokkary (MPP ’12), Brian Runion (MPP ’13) visit the Great Wall of China as part of Potter’s “Introduction to Chinese Policy” course.

Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy

han k me i j er

Breaking ground in Detroit A conversation with businessman, philanthropist, and Ford School friend, Hank Meijer

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etroiters spend an estimated $4.6 billion each year on groceries and other merchandise. And more than $1.5 billion of those retail dollars are spent outside of the city.

That’s about to change: in May 2012 Michiganbased retailer Meijer broke ground on the first of two planned locations. The first location will anchor the forthcoming Gateway Marketplace on the city’s west side with a supercenter—a combination grocery and department store format employed by other retailers but originated by Meijer in 1962.

The Gateway store will be the first Meijer to open its doors in Detroit.

The project spent several years in development, and the developer reportedly received millions in tax incentives— a point of contention among the city’s independent grocers.

Yet according to Olga Stella (MPP ’99), vice president of business development at the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation, conventional financing for Detroit-based real estate development is hard to come by.

“As a result,” she explains, “large projects such as Meijer are very complicated to put together. And the development process can be confusing to the public because the complexity of each project has to do with the size of the [financing] gap.”

Public sector involvement can make the difference in whether a real estate project—of any size—can move forward.

Recently Hank Meijer (AB ’73), CEO and co-chairman of Meijer, Inc., sat down with State & Hill. Son of former CEO Frederik Meijer, who died in 2011, Meijer talked about the new store, Detroit-specific challenges, and his hopes for participating in the city’s revitalization.

What makes this the right time for a Meijer store in Detroit? I think it’s a combination of both the city being receptive and our company being ready. That means the resurgence we’re beginning to see and the new optimism we’re beginning to see about the future of Detroit. It also means our company being willing to move out of its comfort zone and understand better how to tailor a store to a community. That’s a challenge we have: big city versus small town ethnically, demographically, and understanding how to localize a store that serves the mass population.

And we need to get better at that. The ultimate timing was a three-part project, in a sense, with the city and the developer and ourselves all coming together. Finally, this year the stars aligned, and we were able to move ahead.

At a very basic level, people talk about the challenges in central cities with a lack of food choices. Well, there really are quite a few food choices in Detroit. I think you can overstate that case, but it really goes way beyond food choices. An awful lot of Detroiters don’t have opportunities and alternatives to shop in the city. So we don’t see it as only food at all, which is why we’re building one of our larger format stores, about 190,000 square feet. If we can provide people with a good value on the widest possible selection of products, that’s the most fundamental service we can offer. We don’t want to be in the community unless we’re going to be good citizens of that community.

What can Meijer bring to the city’s future?

Local grocers fear that Meijer will have a detrimental impact on independent options in the area. Thoughts?

Well, certainly in every other community we’re in, there are independent grocers. So like all competition, it presents a challenge that you have to rise to—just as we had to when Target and Walmart came to town. You can’t have development and choice and innovation and all the things that we think are important for a vibrant city if you say no to new options. People want choices. And because

(L-R) Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, Hank Meijer, and Detroit Mayor Dave Bing shake hands after a ground-breaking ceremony for the Gateway Marketplace in Detroit on May 17, 2012.

AP Photo/Carlos Osorio

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BUILDING E

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“That’s a challenge we have: big city versus small town ethnically, demographically, and understanding how to localize a store that serves the mass population.”

AVE

MEIJER

BUILDING F

BUILDING G

we think we offer, in this case, a really good choice, our best competitors will do just fine. It’s a challenge, but I think it’s a challenge we all wrestle with in a competitive system.

MEIJER Speaking of competition, Meijer invented the GAS STATION/ supercenter retail model now used by your CONV. STORE competitors. How does that model evolve or adapt

BUILDING J

in Detroit, especially considering public transit

BUILDING L

challenges? When we started, my dad and my grandfather called it a self-service discount department store. It wasn’t until Walmart came along and called them supercenters that we said, ‘Oh, I guess that’s what we’re doing!’ (laughs) BUILDING H

BUILDING I

EIGHT MILE ROAD [The model] better evolve if it needs to. One of the concerns is that our business model is, unquestionably, geared toward a customer with a car, who can buy a REDICO | ONE TOWNE SQUARE | SUITE 1600 | SOUTHFIELD | MICHIGAN 48076 | 248 827 1700 | www.redico.com | Copyright 2012. A large order of groceries, or whatever it might be, and has a trunk to put them in or a backseat to put them in. Do enough people have access to transportation to buy the things we sell? That’s a big question that we hope and expect will be answered with this store.

Maybe the bus system will evolve, too. I sure hope it will. In fact, in a lot of the cities we’re in, [customers have access to] public transportation—a bus stop. We have shelters on our parking lots and encourage bus transportation.

Will the forthcoming Whole Foods be an issue, or is that like comparing apples and oranges? (smiles) Well, we would like to think that we both do a great job with apples and oranges. Our goal—and we hope it’s a business model that has a future—is to serve everyone. Historically, Whole Foods has served a more affluent demographic. They do a beautiful job at that, but it’s a more limited audience.

Recent press mentions the Meijer ‘Midwestern

Illustration: Redico

Strategy,’ which sounds both geographical and philosophical. I’d like to think it is. It reflects a couple of things, and one is the simple business factor that we rely heavily on our own distribution network. It also reflects that we’re privately held. So that meant we were going to grow more slowly than a bigger public company might.

It also meant we were going to be content with Midwest geography. Beyond that, I’d say it would be nice to think that there is a set of Midwestern values. I don’t know how you define that, but to the extent that there’s something a little more authentic, maybe a little less flashy, a little more practical, we hope and feel like that’s part of our culture. ■

Meet Hank Meijer

Hendrik (Hank) Meijer (AB ’73) is a member of the Ford School Committee, a group of public and private sector volunteer leaders who help the school develop new initiatives to further education, research, and service in public policy.

Beginning with Frederik Meijer, the Meijer family has a thirty-year legacy of giving across the University of Michigan, including capital projects, research, and student support. Such commitment is keenly felt in Weill Hall, where the Meijer Family Faculty and Staff Lounge is a hub of activity and where graduate students benefit from Meijer Fellowships. “There’s a real sense of new excitement here,” Meijer explains.

“With the combination of the dean’s initiatives and the physical setting, there’s a real energy at the Ford School that just, I think, typifies the best part of the University.”

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Fac ulty

Faculty News & Awards In September, Robert Axelrod travelled to Egypt, Israel, and the West Bank. The trip was part of Axelrod’s ongoing work in the Middle East and focused on Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and the prospects for a renewed IsraeliPalestinian peace process.

Dean Susan M. Collins chaired the

opening session of the 2012 Economic Policy Symposium and introduced the event’s keynote speaker, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. Collins also co-authored a new report for the National Academy of Sciences on the macro-economic effects of aging in the United States.

Sheldon H. Danziger was appointed

to the National Advisory Committee on Racial, Ethnic, and Other Populations.

Danziger also delivered two lectures including the keynote speech at the Shepard Higher Education Program Symposium on Poverty at the Clinton School of Public Service. In June, Danziger organized, with Martha Bailey, the conference, “The Legacy of the War on Poverty: Implications for the Future of Anti-Poverty Policies.”

E

Axelrod

Alan V. Deardorff spoke on a panel

about nontariff barriers at the UN Conference on Trade and Development in Doha, Qatar. In June, he traveled to Beijing to speak at the Beijing Institute of Technology, Renmin University, and Tsinghua University. Deardorff also traveled to Seoul, South Korea, where he gave talks at the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy and the KDI School, and delivered the keynote address at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation conference on rules of origin.

In July, Susan M. Dynarski testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance about the college financial aid system. At the hearing, “Education Tax Incentives and Tax Reform,” Dynarski argued that a simplified financial aid process would help families estimate how much they can expect to receive from incentives such as the American Opportunity Tax Credit. In September, Dynarski was promoted to full professor and appointed to the editorial board of Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis.

lisabeth R. Gerber was appointed the Jack L.

Walker, Jr., Professor of Public Policy. This collegiate professorship is one of the highest honors that the University can bestow on a faculty member. Gerber chose the name for her professorship to honor Jack L. Walker, Jr., a distinguished professor of public policy and political science who directed the Ford School’s predecessor, the Institute of Public Policy Studies, from 1974 to 1979. “Jack Walker was a wonderful friend and mentor to me when I was a graduate student in the Political Science Department,” Gerber said.

“His work on interest groups and policy diffusion has had a profound impact on my scholarship. It is such a privilege to be able to name this chair in Jack’s honor.” In the next two years Gerber will deliver a public lecture to commemorate her appointment. In April, Gerber was also elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Collins (with Ben Bernanke)

Harding

In August, the American Sociological Association’s (ASA) Section on Inequality, Poverty, and Mobility presented David J. Harding with its 2012 Outstanding Book

Award for Living the Drama: Community, Conflict, and Culture Among Inner-City Boys. Harding’s book studied three Boston neighborhoods to analyze how local community dynamics shape the lives and opportunities of inner-city boys.

James S. House was awarded the

Henry Russel Lectureship for 2013, one of the university’s highest honors for a senior member of its active faculty.

House received the award in recognition of his work on the role of social and psychological factors in the course of health and illness, including understanding and alleviating social disparities in health.

House will present the Russel Lecture on March 14, 2013.

Philip B. K. Potter was awarded funding from the Minerva Research Initiative for a new research project, “Terrorist Alliances: Causes, Dynamics, and Consequences.” The Minerva Research Initiative is a Department of Defensesponsored, university-based social science research initiative focused on understanding the social, cultural, behavioral, and political forces in areas of the world of strategic importance to the United States.

Carl P. Simon received a 2012 Rackham Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award for consistently demonstrating outstanding achievements in the areas of research, teaching, service, and other activities that have brought distinction to the University of Michigan. Simon was also appointed to a three-year term on the National Academies of Science Board of Mathematical Sciences and their Applications.

S T A T E & HILL

House

Rabe

Smith

In September, Jeffrey Smith spoke at a conference sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute, “Getting America back to work: Can training programs do the job?” The event weighed the effectiveness of publicly funded job training programs in reducing unemployment and considered possible reforms to these programs.

Allan C. Stam , a professor of political

science in the College of LSA since 2007, moved 50 percent of his appointment to the Ford School as professor of public policy in September and became director of the International Policy Center. Stam’s research focuses on the dynamics of armed conflict between and within states.

In October, Kevin Stange presented a paper to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) on the use of differential pricing by undergraduate programs. The practice—which entails charging greater tuition for certain programs—is an approach many institutions are taking to increase revenue. The presentation was part of the CFPB’s research into student loans and how students pay for college.

Stevenson

Wolfers

Yang

economics, public economics, and behavioral economics. He will split his appointment between the Ford School and the College of LSA’s Department of Economics beginning in January 2013.

launched at a reading and reception at the U-M, with similar events in Washington, DC, New York, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, and at Princeton University.

Marina v.N. Whitman ’s memoir, The

October issue of the American Economic Review. The paper, “Credit Market Consequences of Improved Personal Identification: Field Experimental Evidence from Malawi,” analyzes the use of identification by fingerprinting to reduce the risks of microloans in Malawi.

Martian’s Daughter was published by University of Michigan Press in September. The book, which traces Whitman’s groundbreaking career and colorful life as the daughter of famed mathematician John von Neumann, was

Dean Yang published a new paper in the

L

ong-time and much-loved writer and lecturer Elena

Delbanco will retire from the Ford School in December.

Elena has contributed to the professional and personal successes of hundreds of graduate students. The Ford School is deeply grateful for her abiding commitment to the school’s work and we will dearly miss her buoyant presence.

Those of us who know Elena know that at this point in the story, it is far and away the best option to cede the floor to her heart, her talent, her words: After twenty five years at the Ford School and its many previous incarnations;

Economists Betsey Stevenson and

After four offices at Lorch Hall and one at Weill Hall;

Justin Wolfers have joined the Ford

After the arrivals and departures of many friends on the staff and faculty;

School faculty. The two economists have received national attention for their respective research as well as their research on the economics of “coupledom.”

Stevenson joined the Ford School as an associate professor of public policy in September. She is a labor economist whose research explores women’s labor market experiences, the economic forces shaping the modern family, and the potential value of subjective wellbeing data for public policy. Wolfers’ research interests include labor economics, macroeconomics, political economy, economics of the family, social policy, law and

And given my great good fortune to have worked with legions of bright, ambitious, talented students, many of whom remain dear to me, I can’t believe I’m saying farewell. But I am. What once, long ago, was a good but untested idea in response to an obvious need has now become a full-fledged, highly respected Writing Center, thanks to the talents of those who have worked here. I leave the center in the very capable hands of David Morse and Alex Ralph.

I’ve loved my years at the Ford School and hope to remain an elder of this remarkable community.

— Elena Delbanco Elena, we thank you for all you've done to build and sustain the Ford School community. You can drop Elena a line (or a policy memo?) at elenadel@umich.edu.

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Al umni

Class Notes Baba

Burke M. Raymond (MPA ’62) is

LeeAnn Pelham (MPP ’89) currently

the current President and 12-year board member of the Gordon Elwood Foundation (GEF), a philanthropic organization focused on health, education, and economic issues in southern Oregon.

consults on the design and advancement of governmental ethics programs, public sector leadership, and the implementation of political reform.

From 2001 to 2011, she was Executive Director of the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission. LeeAnn is based in both southeastern LA County and the San Francisco East Bay area.

Kaoru Mamiya (MPA ’74) has served as

the President of the Japan Space Forum (JSF) for three years. JSF is the only owner and operator of dedicated facilities for monitoring space debris in Japan.

Jack P. Layne, Jr. (MPP ’77) has served

as a municipal manager in Ohio and Pennsylvania for approximately 13 years.

Ken Hunter (MPP ’81) and Bill Wehrle

(MPP ’88) are jointly responsible for the implementation of the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance exchange provisions for Kaiser Permanente (KP) in 10 states. Ken is Senior VP of Health Insurance Exchange Operations and Bill is VP of Health Insurance Exchanges.

They discovered in a car ride that they were both IPPSters.

In July, Barbara Peitsch (MPP ’85) joined the Center for Political Studies at the Institute of Social Research, University of Michigan, where she directs two U.S. State Department programs that promote entrepreneurship among young people in the Middle East and North Africa.

Kim Stone (MS ’94, MPP ’93) is running for City Council in Highland Park, Illinois in the April 2013 election and welcomes campaign involvement from any area Ford School alums.

Lauren Larson (MPP ’98) accepted a

new position as director of the Division of Professions and Occupations with the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies.

Amanda Bright McClanahan (MPP ’03) recently became the Budget Director for the Michigan Department of Human Services.

Hillary Mull (MPP ’03) and Aron Boros (MPP/JD ’06) welcomed a second baby, Isaac Boros in July. They are putting their policy degrees to good use in Boston: Hillary is currently an investigator at the Boston VA and a research fellow in the Boston University School of Medicine. Aron was closely involved in the recent health reform legislation in Massachusetts.

David DeVoursney (MPP ‘05) has taken

a new job in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at the Department of Health and Human Services. He’s an analyst working on behavioral health issues.

Larisa Shambaugh (MPP ’05) was

In August, Kristen Grauer ’s (MPP ’01) son Alexander Emmanuel Grauer Warren was born at the American Hospital in Paris. Kristen is covering the Eurozone crisis in the Economic Section of the U.S. Embassy in Paris.

Dave Osta (MPP ’06) began working as the Director of Policy and Program Implementation for Race to the Top 3 at the Illinois State Board of Education in March 2012.

Takashi Baba (MPP ’02) celebrated his

the Ford Motor Company Product Development June 2012 Program Management Achievement Award for work that shortened the process of sourcing suppliers for the $500 million expansion of the Fusion to Flat Rock Assembly Plant. Cisco, his wife, and six children live in Ann Arbor.

wedding day surrounded by his friends and the cherry blossoms of Tokyo in April 2012.

Director of State Affairs at Justice at Stake, an organization in Washington, DC working to make the courts more fair and impartial.

Curry

Charles Henley (MPP ’00), his wife Francesca, and son Max welcomed baby Claribel to the family in June 2012. They make their home in Westchester County, New York.

Francisco Sanchez (MPP ’88) received

Debra Erenberg (MPP ’89) is the new

Balkin

Laura Curry (Smith) (MPP ’03) married Chris Curry on February 4, 2012. She lives in Houston, where she works in the real estate industry.

Chloe (Hutchinson) Gibbs (MPP ’03)

completed her PhD at the University of Chicago in June 2012. She and her husband, Shea, now live with their two daughters in Charlottesville, Virginia where Chloe is on faculty at UVA’s Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy.

selected for the Broad Residency in Urban Education and in August joined the Newark Public Schools, where she serves as the Director of Special Projects.

Angela Boatman (MPP/MA ‘06) completed her doctoral degree in May 2012 from the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University. In the fall 2012 she began an appointment as a Postdoctoral Scholar in the School of Education at Stanford University.

Sarah Farkas (MPP ’06) married John Kim, a writer based in Los Angeles, on September 22. She moved to Los Angeles earlier this year and would love to reconnect with any area Fordies.

Sarah Perrine (MPP/MA ’06) worked as Director of Programs for the Economically Disadvantaged with the

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Farkas

Fritz

Grauer

America for Bulgaria Foundation for three years. In October, she began work as CEO of a new organization, the Trust for Social Achievement, which seeks to increase educational and employment levels among Bulgaria’s Roma population.

Vibeke Brask Thomsen ’s (MPP/MA ‘06)

second baby girl, Charlotte Julie Karen Brask Carty, was born on August 17 in Monaco.

Christina Stick ’s (MPP ’07) daughter,

Madeleiene Helen Stick, was born on July 8, 2012. She joins her brother, Caleb, who is now 2 years old.

Procyk

Stephanie Procyk (MPP ’10) married

May 2012 from the Fordham University School of Law. In October, he began his career as an Associate in the New York office of law firm Hogan Lovells.

Adam Shamoon on August 12, 2012.

They live in Toronto and are happy to show Fordies around. Stephanie started a position as Manager of Research, Public Policy, and Evaluation for United Way Toronto.

Andrew J. Renacci (BA ’09) joined the Cleveland office of Squire Sanders (U.S.) LLP, an international legal practice, as an associate in September 2012.

Cortney Watson (MPP ’09) recently

accepted a position at McAllister and Quinn (Washington, DC) as its Director of Grants, Policy, and Federal Affairs. She will be working with many of the firm’s nonprofit and higher ed clients to expand their funding and advocate for their needs on Capitol Hill.

Craig Cammarata (MPP/MS ’10) and

Karen Biddle Andres (MPP/MBA ’08)

Hilary A. Doe (MPP ‘08) was named

Vice President of the Roosevelt Institute, a progressive think tank. Hilary started her PhD in politics this fall at Princeton.

She lives in New York City with her fiancé.

Naomi Goldberg (MPP ’08) married

Libby Hemphill in Chicago in May. Naomi was recently invited to participate in a policy round table with Vice President Joe Biden for emerging leaders in the LGBT community.

Michael Balkin (BA ’09) recently began medical training at Chicago Medical School.

Wild twins

Max M.L. Nowak (BA ’09) graduated in

Elliot Wild (MPP ’09) and his wife Bonnie Wild welcomed twin boys, Grant Evan and Gabriel Scott, into the world on March 19, 2012.

and David Newville (MPP ’08) stood on the podium of the New York Stock Exchange in April 2012 and rang the closing bell on behalf of the Center for Financial Services Innovation (CFSI).

Thomsen

his wife Lizzie welcomed their first baby, Pierce Thomas Cammarata on August 26. Craig was also recently promoted to Principal at Concurrent Technologies Corporation.

After two years in the Boston Mayor’s Office, Dana Conroy (MPP ’10) has left to join Continuum, a global innovation and design consultancy headquartered in Boston.

Pete Fritz (MPP/MBA ’10), his wife Jane, and son Henry, welcomed Stanley Theodore Fritz into the world on August 10, 2012. Henry loves being a big brother and the family’s dog, Barkley, has accepted with aplomb that he has another competitor for time and affection.

Jon Hill (BA ’10) started the MPA/ID

program at Harvard’s Kennedy School this fall and is expected to graduate in 2014.

Dani Liffman (BA ’10) moved from Washington, DC to Chicago to start a new position as a research analyst at NORC at the University of Chicago.

Egan Reich (MPP ’10) co-wrote a romantic comedy, Save the Date, which will be released by IFC Films this fall. The film premiered in the U.S. Dramatic Competition at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. Egan is completing the Presidential Management Fellowship at the U.S. Department of Labor in Washington, DC. Nicole Auerbach (BA ’11) was

promoted to become one of USA Today’s national college basketball reporters. She lives in the DC area but will travel the country covering basketball as well as some college football.

Katherine King (PhD ’11) received an

ORISE Postdoctoral Research position at the Environmental Protection Agency in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology at Duke.

Molly Maguire (MPP ’11) moved to New

York to begin her new role as an analyst with Mayor Bloomberg’s intergovernmental relations team. She covers various issues including criminal justice, transportation, and higher education.

G. Scott Thompson (MPP ’11) was

recently selected for promotion to Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army.

Jesse Franzblau (MPP ’12) is consulting

for the Italy-based International Institute of Higher Studies in Criminal Sciences (ISISC) and will be in Siracusa, Sicily until December. He is currently working on a report on Libya, based on the UN Commission of Inquiry into Libya carried out last year.

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Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy

THE LAST WORD

Policy Talks @ the Ford School Chris Myers, at CBO Director Doug Elmendorf's lecture.

Behind the curtain

D

ean Collins charged the Communications & Outreach team with carrying out a key element of her second term strategy: conceiving, planning, and executing a number of high-profile public events—and leveraging those events to raise the Ford School’s profile and build relationships.

See the photo spread (opposite) for some highlights. Here, Communications Director Laura K. Lee (MPP ’96) speaks with the staff responsible for the “1,001 details” as they offer an inside look at a very busy, successful fall events calendar.

Event roles Cliff Martin , Chris Myers ,

Meeting and Special Events Planner (lead) Webmaster (social media, web-streaming,

tech support) Katie Trevathan ,

Publications Manager (advertising,

design, printing) Laura Lee:

LL:

Best moments from the fall events?

I loved the diversity of some of the audiences— students, community members, faculty. I think that was a really good sign that we picked speakers and topics relevant to a lot of different people.

Cliff:

General Hayden’s remarks got picked up in Wired, on CSPAN, and in several other national outlets. And then with Dick Costolo, it was really exciting that an influential blogger picked up what was said about tweet archives. His small post led to major coverage from some top tech sites.

And then you could just see it cascade—multiple tweets per minute with the Ford School prominently in the story.

Chris:

Working on the Betty Ford Tribute, I called the White House Historical Association to get permission to reprint something, and ended up speaking with the woman who had been Mrs. Ford's Social Secretary!

Katie:

Favorite thing about public events?

First, I’d say first meeting the speakers and seeing that they're just people. And then there’s that moment right in the middle of Q & A: I’m relieved we've gotten there logistics-wise, but also, that’s when you can see that people are asking good questions, that they had been engaged the whole time. It’s validation that all the hard work was worth it.

Cliff:

Learning about the speakers and why we thought they would be an interesting fit. And getting to spread the message too, like telling my mom, “Guess who came!”

Katie:

LL:

There’s a huge volume of detailed work. We do two or three drafts of each marketing piece, for example, and we average ten pieces per event.

Katie:

Most challenging?

LL: To me the best part is the chance to be behind the scenes…

Yes, although that can be very stressful, too, because it means you’re responsible! And there are also some awkward moments behind the scenes: I took President Coleman’s coat, for example, and then thought, [pause] I don’t know what to do with this… [laughter] There’s a lot of improv in event planning….

Cliff:

LL:

My biggest fear is having some tech thing fail.

Because it will happen—not if, but when. So you need back-ups. A million things could go wrong—the streaming, the social media, microphones, projectors, recording equipment. It’s always nerve wracking until you know that everything is working.

Chris:

Cliff Martin escorts President Coleman and Ambassador Brinker.

Do you actually get to hear the lectures?

Chris, Cliff, Katie:

No! [Laughter]

I’m hearing the audio twice—once through my headphones—so I can’t really listen. And I’m too busy watching the technology.

Chris:

LL: Best post-event celebration? After Costolo, for example, when we found out that Dominick’s has a basement? [laughter] A number of us had actually gone to Michigan and still had no idea.

Yeah, I’d say heading to Dominick’s after Costolo.

It was great to have that success behind us—I mean Costolo was just so good … I loved that day! It was fun to have everybody on the team there.

Cliff:

Alums, we’d love your help. If you can connect us with future high-profile speakers, please drop Cliff a line: cliftonm@umich.edu.

sept

7

Just another Fall at the Ford School

sept

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S TAT E & H I L L

Oct

12

Left column: Top to bottom 9/7 Air Force General Michael Hayden, former director of the CIA and NSA 9/11 One Nation (In)Divisible, a National Poverty Center debate about the future of inequality in America

oct

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9/20 Doug Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office

sept

20

9/27 Roger Ferguson, president and chief executive officer of TIAA-CREF 9/28 Rajiv Shah (BS ’95), administrator of USAID 10/8 Lawrence Lessig, Harvard professor of law and leadership

Sept

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oct

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10/11 Ambassador Nancy G. Brinker at the U-M Tribute to Mrs. Betty Ford Right column: Top to bottom 10/12 Rebekah Cooke (President Ford’s granddaughter), Michael Ford, and Steve Ford talked with Ford School students about policy interests and career goals

sept

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oct

8

Nov

6

10/17 Frank Zarb, The Ford Administration Energy Czar, visits with Ford School undergrads 10/29 Glenn C. Loury, Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences at Brown University 11/6 Issues & Ale: election night viewing party co-hosted with Michigan Radio

nov

16

11/16 Dick Costolo (BS ’85), CEO of Twitter 11/27 It’s even worse than it looks: A conversation with Thomas Mann (PhD ’77, MA ’68) and Norman Ornstein (PhD ’77)

Oct

11

Policy Talks @ the Ford School

nov

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Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy

Joan and Sanford Weill Hall 735 S. State Street Ann Arbor, MI 48109-3091

Printed using vegetable-based inks with electricity offset by renewable energy wind credits. The paper is FSC certified, manufactured from 100% post-consumer waste using biogas energy, and elemental chlorine free.

Join us

in person or online for these upcoming 2013 Ford School events:

January 14

January 23

February 7

March 20

Policy Talks @ the Ford School lecture

by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke

Screening and panel discussion of “Black and Blue,” a film about Gerald Ford, Willis Ward, and the 1934 Michigan-Georgia Tech football game

Lecture and networking event in Washington, DC following the Ford School’s annual MPP recruiting trip

Helene Gayle, president and CEO of CARE USA

This event will be live web-streamed

A Citigroup Foundation Lecture This event will be live web-streamed

Part of the University of Michigan’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Symposium 2013

Visit fordschool.umich.edu/events for more details or fordschool.umich.edu/videos to watch videos from our past events. For the latest event news, sign up by emailing fspp-events@umich.edu.

Stay Connected

www.fordschool.umich.edu/stay-connected

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