Recent Hires

Maraam Dwidar, assistant professor of political science

Dwidar’s research focuses on American national institutions and public policy, with emphases on minority representation, organized interests, and bureaucratic politics. She has published in the Journal of Black Studies and in The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics and she was supported by a 2014-2016 Minority Fellowship from the American Political Science Association and a 2014-2018 Malcolm Macdonald Recruitment Fellowship from the University of Texas at Austin, where she earned a Ph.D. in government.

A separate study by Landes showed the case-fatality rate was consistently between 1.8 and 2.2 times higher than for the state among people with IDD living in group homes across New York State.

Landes, associate professor of sociology, told PBS NewsHour, “It has not been surprising, on one hand, that states have not prioritized this group, because that’s historically been the case.” On the other, “It’s been disappointing, because the evidence was there pre-pandemic, and the evidence is there now that this group is at higher risk.”

Landes additionally spoke with the Washington Post, The New York Times, CBS News, ABC News, NPR and Newsweek, among other outlets, on the need for better reporting and prioritization of services for people with IDD.

Landes, a faculty associate with Syracuse University’s Aging Studies Institute, tracks health and mortality trends for people with IDD and veterans in the U.S. His work includes the IDD Age at Death Data Tracker, which provides a stark picture of the younger age of death for people with IDD, as well as by disability status, sex and race-ethnicity.

To view the tracker, visit asi.syr.edu/idd-age-at-deathdata-tracker/

Michael John Williams, associate professor of public administration and international affairs Williams previously served as a clinical professor and director of international relations at New York University. He researches international security, with a concentration in 20th-century Europe, and has published on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and issues of war and technology. He is the author of Science, Law and Liberalism in the American Way of War: The Quest for Humanity in Conflict (Cambridge University Press, 2014). He has been associated with numerous policy institutes, including the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington, D.C. He earned a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics & Political Science.

Yael Zeira, associate professor of political science

Zeira was previously an assistant professor of political science and international studies at the University of Mississippi. She examines public opinion and political behavior in authoritarian and conflict settings, with a focus on the Middle East. She wrote The Revolution Within: State Institutions and Unarmed Resistance in Palestine (Cambridge University Press, 2019) and has been published in numerous journals. Her work has been supported by the Project on Middle East Political Science, New York University, Stanford University, the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She received a Ph.D. in politics from New York University.