Molly Egan (left) and Marlana Bianchi won the Grand Prix for their Spotify AI idea, “Break the Sound Barrier.” (Photo courtesy of AKQA)

This is part one of a two-part series documenting the first time Newhouse creative advertising students won the Cannes Future Lions Grand Prix.

In June 2024, Newhouse School creative advertising students Molly Egan ’25 and Marlana Bianchi ’24 walked across the stage to claim the most prestigious student award in the world: the Cannes Future Lions Grand Prix, at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in Cannes, France.

The Cannes Lions Awards are so prestigious, they are considered the Oscars of the advertising industry. And this year, Syracuse made history as the first U.S. undergraduate university to win a Cannes Future Lions Grand Prix. In 2018, Syracuse became the first U.S. undergraduate university to ever win a Cannes Future Lions award.

This year’s competition saw entries from 245 schools across 59 countries—three times the number of entries from the previous year.

Each year, the competition releases a brief for students to answer. The brief for the 2024 competition was for Spotify. Egan and Bianchi earned the award through their compelling entry, “,” designed to make music streaming inclusive for the deaf community.

“‘Break the Sound Barrier’ is phenomenal, bravo. My favorite ideas make me deeply jealous that I didn’t think of them. And they make me ask: ‘How has this not been done yet?’ Because it’s so good,” says Avi Steinbach ’14, creative director/writer at Ogilvy and alumnus of the Newhouse creative advertising program.

Steinbach also won his first Cannes Lions Grand Prix this year in the Social and Influencer Category for the “” campaign. He was involved in every aspect of its creation—from the initial concept and pitching CeraVe to the script, social concepts and Super Bowl spot.

The Inspiration Behind the AI Idea��

Egan and Bianchi said their goal was to make music streaming inclusive for the deaf community.

“Sometimes the best ideas are your first ideas,” says Bianchi. “For me, they often come late at night when I’m exhausted and falling asleep at my desk. This idea started like that, and then Molly and I built on it to create something truly unique.”

Egan said their inspiration began with what she called the unforgettable halftime show at the 2023 Super Bowl.

“Rihanna headlined, but she wasn’t the only performer to leave a lasting impression,” she says. “At that time, Marlana was studying abroad in Florence, Italy, and I was in my college house without ESPN, so we both ended up watching the show on YouTube. From our separate corners of the world, we were mesmerized. Rihanna was split screen with Justina Miles. Miles, a deaf sign language performer, didn’t just translate Riri’s music—she embodied it.”

With electrifying energy, Miles created a whole new dimension to the performance. She brought every lyric and note to life, performing each word while dancing to Rihanna’s beats. Her hands told the story, and her body caught the rhythm so precisely that it felt like she was channeling the core of Rihanna’s music, Egan said.

“Marlana and I couldn’t stop replaying her performance, captivated by how she brought the music to life for both deaf and hearing fans,” Egan added.

Little did they know, this was the first time a deaf sign language performer like Miles was invited to join the Super Bowl halftime show. This major move for music inclusivity is what inspired Egan and Bianchi’s award-winning idea.

Another source of inspiration was MasterCard’s “True Name” campaign, which was shared during their Portfolio III course taught by , professor of practice in advertising. The campaign inspired them to think about how ideas can move the needle on inclusivity. “True Name” lets transgender and nonbinary people display their chosen name on their banking cards, regardless of the name on their identification or birth certificate.

The Grand Prix-Winning Idea for Spotify

“Break the Sound Barrier” is a digital idea for Spotify that aims to make music streaming more inclusive to the deaf community by integrating deaf sign language performances into the platform, ensuring that music streaming is accessible to all users, regardless of their hearing ability.

By partnering with deaf performers like Miles and using deepfake technology, “Break the Sound Barrier” can scale deaf performances into over 300 sign languages for each song on the platform. This approach ensures that Spotify will be accessible to the deaf community.

The next part of their idea lets musicians choose to opt into “.” If a musician opts in, Spotify will generate them signing with deepfake technology. This will let musicians perform in all the world’s sign languages for the first time, bringing deaf fans closer to their favorite artists than ever before.

‘‘‘Break the Sound Barrier’ is just so simple. Real problem. Real solution. While so many agencies are trying to find ways to use deepfake and AI, this idea uses it to address a real issue. This idea also starts on the app, but I could see it extending in a number of ways [like real-life concerts]—another good sign of a huge idea,” says Steinbach.

To read the full story, visit .

Story by , senior in the Newhouse School

The East Side Gallery, one of the last remaining pieces of the original Berlin Wall, stretches for 1.3 km along Muhlenstrasse.

Although the wall’s physical presence is diminished, the “fall” of the Berlin Wall on Nov. 9, 1989, remains a significant moment in history.

Lauren Woodard, assistant professor of anthropology in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, says the event was just one of several across communist Eastern Europe that showed how solidarity among people could foster resistance and bring change.

“After growing resistance across the region, especially in neighboring Poland, East Germans had mobilized throughout the summer and fall of 1989 to visit West Germany,” says Woodard, who is also a senior research associate in the Center for European Studies within the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs. “There was a lot of confusion about crossing the border in this moment, amid growing protest and political transformations in the region (Solidarity’s successful movement in neighboring Poland and amid Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika in the Soviet Union).”

On Nov. 9, 1989, during a press conference, an East German official inadvertently said that a new policy allowing travel outside of East Germany could happen immediately without restrictions, when in fact the policy was going to be implemented the following day with prerequisites. Tens of thousands of people went to the wall, to various checkpoints, and eventually one opened, where West Germans and East Germans celebrated together.

Lauren Woodard

While the wall didn’t actually “fall” that day, the figurative collapse was symbolic of that period when the populations of Eastern Europe struggled out from the grip of communism.

“This is a starting point in my class [Transformations of Eastern Europe] to understand this moment as one of euphoria and celebration, the idea of the end of the Cold War, and the success of collective action, but one that was also deeply destabilizing for many people, as their economies crashed and they navigated profound social, economic and political transformations throughout the 1990s,” Woodard says.

In the following Q&A, Woodard shares her insights on the fall of the Berlin Wall. For any media who wish to schedule an interview with Woodard, please reach out to Vanessa Marquette, media relations specialist, at vrmarque@syr.edu.

Why was that moment when the Berlin Wall was breached such a visceral moment for people all over the world?

People responded to the “fall” of the Berlin Wall as a moment of victory, that demonstrated how resistance could be achieved through cooperation, as demonstrated earlier that year by the Solidarity Movement in Poland, demonstrations in Hungary and the Singing Revolution, in which nearly two million people held hands across Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, calling for their independence from the Soviet Union. The “fall” of the Berlin Wall symbolized how people could work together and form coalitions to resist, providing hope to everyone for change.

How did the lives of citizens in those countries behind the Iron Curtain change once the wall came down?

The answer to this question varies based on location. I will speak from my own experiences conducting research in Russia and Kazakhstan, two former Soviet countries. While many people experienced the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union as euphoric—this sense of resistance and political collaboration across Cold War boundaries, experienced at the same time as romantic ideas of globalization and the decline of nation-states—the 1990s were a period of profound political, economic and social transformations that were deeply destabilizing. “Shock” therapy, meant to transition former communist countries to democracy and a global market economy, led to profound disenfranchisement and inequality.

As an American college student in 2010, studying abroad in Russia for the first time, I did not expect my host family and my friends to speak nostalgically of the Soviet Union and to genuinely support Vladimir Putin. They described great hardship of the 1990s—long lines, financial and political uncertainty, which factored into parents’ decisions whether to start a family.

A marker of the remains of Berlin Wall

They were also deeply disappointed with the West. They had believed that with the end of the Cold War, there would no longer be a divide between East and West, that there would be no need for NATO, and that the European Union’s (EU) expansion might include them too, since they were Russian and, therefore, European.

When NATO and the EU expanded to include Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, but not Russia, Ukraine or Georgia, for example, they felt isolated and othered. Meanwhile, they associated stability with Vladimir Putin’s presidency, even if it came at the cost of challenges to free speech.

Although the Cold War may have ended in 1989 and 1991, divisions reemerged in new ways in the 1990s that crystallized in the 2000s, leading to today’s present situation, in which Russia has isolated itself globally once again, while attacking its neighbor, Ukraine, as part of a larger project of Russian imperialism, that is markedly different from the Soviet project of communism. This is the subject of my book project—how people navigate these profound changes on an everyday level.

What have been the long-lasting impacts for Eastern Europe and all of Europe?

I think what gets lost is the impact of the end of communism for Western Europe and the United States. Without the Soviet Union as the U.S.’s foil, the U.S. floundered throughout the 1990s to identify who we were as a country and what we stood for. I think this is partially why we latched onto the idea of “global terrorism,” as an alternative to construct ourselves against, with serious implications.

With the Iraq War, we lost serious credibility as a global leader that will take decades to recover from. It is here that we see the reemergence of Russia as an illiberal alternative, aligned with China, Iran and other actors to challenge American hegemony.

The report finds President Joe Biden’s and Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaigns together outspent now President-elect Donald Trump on Facebook and Instagram by about 6-to-1 ($140 million to $24 million) between Sept. 1, 2023, and the Nov. 5, 2024, election. Meta owns the social media platforms Facebook and Instagram.����

The fourth quarterly report from Syracuse University’s  (IDJC) also identifies more than $6 million in negative ads from groups backed by Elon Musk that accept unlimited sums from anonymous donors, a source of financing known as “dark money.” The ads, which undercut Harris, aired during the closing weeks of the campaign.����

The world’s richest man, Musk is CEO of Tesla and owns social media platform X. He has emerged as a close advisor to Trump.����

• The report looks at spending on Meta Platforms related to Musk-backed Progress 2028, Building America’s Future PAC, Future Coalition and FC PACs, Duty to America, Fair��Election Fund, RBG PAC and America PAC.��

• In addition to messaging about the economy and illegal immigration, the ads aim to erode support for Democrats among Black Americans who smoke menthol cigarettes;, and send conflicting, targeted messages about the Israel-Hamas war. For instance, in Michigan, ads played up Harris’ support for Israel to erode Arab and Muslim voters’ support for the vice president; while in Pennsylvania, ads emphasized Harris’ sympathy for Palestinians to turn off Jewish voters.��

��The ElectionGraph report provides a powerful—though only partial—measure of the volume of election-related messaging on social media, whether ads originated from the candidates’ own campaigns or the vast web of outside groups that range from truthful and transparent, to murky and conspiracy-minded, and everything in between.����

This is the final installment in a yearlong research project that seeks to identify misinformation trends in the U.S. presidential election. The project is supported by a grant and the use of analytics software from , the world’s leading graph database and analytics company.��

The ElectionGraph team’s efforts include pinpointing origins of messages and tracing misinformation by collecting and algorithmically classifying ads run on Facebook and Instagram. ElectionGraph also has developed a publicly accessible dashboard to explore its findings.��

“In the closing days of the election, shady groups with unclear motives ran duplicitous ads meant to manipulate the public’s understanding of candidate Harris’ policies,” says Jennifer Stromer-Galley, a professor in the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University and ElectionGraph’s lead researcher. “The fragmented information environment combined with weak regulation around campaign finance and disclosures on digital ads leaves the public vulnerable to actors who will say anything to try and win elections.”��

While Meta allows approved organizations to access ad data, such data is not required to be made available—and is not similarly trackable—on TikTok, Google, YouTube or Snapchat. The findings nevertheless provide a framework to visualize the fire hose of information and misinformation targeting voters from groups with a jumble of motives, ties and trustworthiness ahead of the 2024 election.��

Graph databases have emerged as a formidable ally in unmasking coordinated misinformation campaigns this election cycle, says Jim Webber, chief scientist at Neo4j. ��

“Using Neo4j, IDJC ElectionGraph researchers have illuminated vast networks of accounts acting in unison to amplify false narratives, even when those accounts tried to maintain a veneer of independence,” Webber says. “They were able to quickly see the forest through the trees and map out an intricate structure of this problematic content, which had the potential to deceive voters.”��

The Institute for Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship is a joint University initiative of the  and the .��

“Election ads on social media in the closing weeks of the campaign can be particularly influential, but also difficult in terms of voters’ ability to see whose money and influence is behind them, given lag times in reporting requirements,”says IDJC Kramer Director , a journalist and professor of practice at the Newhouse School.  ��

As misinformation surges online, Hirsch became increasingly concerned with how AI has made the creation and spread of fake news easier than ever. Her innovative solution? Use the same technology driving misinformation to combat it.

Hirsch wondered, “what better way to protect people from false AI content than using AI to detect it?” This thought sparked her idea, which she cleverly titled “AI vs. AI.” Her two-minute����shows how this idea would work.

Creative advertising student Brooke Hirsch ’24 is one of 10 worldwide winners of the Clio Award for Student Innovation for her idea “AI vs. AI.”

This past May, 10 student ideas from around the world won a 2024 Clio Award for Student Innovation. Hirsch’s idea was one of them. Winning a Clio as a student or a professional in the industry is one of advertising’s highest honors, and Hirsch earned this distinction while a student in the�� in the Newhouse School.

“Brooke Hirsch created an innovative AI idea that would help move the needle on protecting people from believing deceptive AI content,” says , creative advertising professor of practice at Newhouse. “This student work was created after I gave a presentation in my Portfolio III course on how to effectively use emerging technologies for brands. Our creative advertising students learn how to create original ideas utilizing emerging technologies to solve problems, all so that they are prepared to work as copywriters or art directors in the advertising industry. Brooke nailed it. This idea is excellent.”

The Story Behind Her Win: How Did Hirsch Create “AI vs. AI?”

After her presentation on emerging technologies, White tasked her Portfolio III students with this brief: Create a digital idea using new technology for a global brand that solves a problem.

When brainstorming problems to solve, Hirsch recalled recent news coverage about how the deceptive use of AI is tricking people into believing that fake news is real. Coverage of AI’s problematic usage led Hirsch to pick AI-generated misinformation as the problem to address.

“I’m deeply concerned about the impact of AI,” Hirsch says. “That’s when I started thinking—what if we could turn AI against itself? I know that AI has the potential to be a powerful tool for social good. This led me to explore how we could harness it to combat the problem it’s created. That’s how the idea for ‘AI vs. AI’ was born.”

Hirsch’s NYT ad campaign calls out deceptive AI journalism and shows “AI vs. AI” as a revolutionary tool that detects and notifies people of AI-generated misinformation.

Hirsch chose The New York Times (NYT) as her brand because of its demonstrated commitment to safeguarding the truth. As Hirsch developed her idea, White helped her think about how each component of the digital idea would appear in the NYT app, asking “How will this feature work?” and “What’s the user experience from start to finish?” White also guided Hirsch to decide on the creative name of her idea.

“Professor White’s superpower is knowing when an idea is good,” Hirsch says. “The sentence to pit AI against AI was somewhere in one of my write-ups. It was just something that I wrote, and she was like, ‘that should be the name. That should be everywhere.’ It was just a sentence that I threw out there. For that to be the crux of the idea, I needed her to tell me that.”

As Hirsch worked on the idea, her Portfolio III mentor Carl Peterson gave her helpful feedback. In Portfolio III, White uses her industry connections to pair each student team with a creative director from a top ad agency to receive additional feedback on their work. Peterson, an award-winning creative director at Mischief—named Ad Age’s #1 Global Ad Agency of the Year and Creative Agency of the Year— introduced Hirsch to Droga5’s “The Truth is Hard” campaign, helping Hirsch to capture the Times’s voice in her “AI vs. AI” case video.

“The hardest part was making the case study video script because it’s all about getting the language right, Hirsch said. “Each brand has a specific voice, and The New York Times has a very specific voice. They’re witty but not goofy. It was a great experience to learn how to write for a brand as big as this one.”

How Does “AI vs. AI” Protect the Truth?

“The New York Times has always believed that the truth comes before anything,” Hirsch’s case study video starts. “But how do you find the truth when you can’t tell between what’s real and what’s fake?”

To fight in the war against AI, “AI vs. AI” would create a revolutionary AI tool that detects and notifies people of AI-created misinformation on their phones and computers, in real-time.

“AI vs. AI” would scan images for signs of AI creation or manipulation, articles for signs of AI writing that is deceptive and videos for deepfakes and AI voices that misportray people or information.

To get the word out, Hirsch created ads to get Americans to question the “news” they see. These ads would read “How do you know that AI didn’t write this article? Now you can find out. Spot AI using AI. Free with a NYT subscription.”

Banner ads would be placed on YouTube, where deepfakes circulate. These ads would read “There’s no way to tell what you’re watching is a deepfake. Until now. Spot AI using AI. Download the NYT app.”

Hirsch’s student idea “AI vs. AI” is about the preservation of human truth.

The case study video concludes: “In order to protect ourselves, we need to protect the truth. Because human truth is everything.”

Why Does This Matter?

In a world where people use their phones to rapidly access information, they rely on their social feeds for their news. The danger of AI-driven misinformation is that it is increasingly convincing and difficult to spot, making it a huge threat to those relying on social media for their information.

Hirsch’s idea protects people from this AI-driven misinformation by turning AI against itself, creating a tool that finds AI-generated misinformation. This tool is more important than ever, as it provides a vital method to safeguard our democracy from AI-driven deception.

Crucially, “AI vs. AI” does not infringe on the right to free speech. Instead, it helps people effectively dodge AI-driven misinformation by teaming up with a trusted source: The New York Times.

How the Creative Advertising Program Helps Students Succeed

Hirsch credited Newhouse’s creative advertising program for pushing students like her to achieve such extraordinary feats.

“The program pushes students to be creative and encourages them to stretch an idea as far as possible, with just the weight of the idea,” she says. “This program pushes you to start with a huge idea, and Professor White won’t let you go any further without one. I think that’s what makes the program create so many amazing creatives. I watched my classmates develop campaigns that you would imagine a huge agency to do, or are even better than what huge agencies do, because all the work stems from the power of an idea. This program demands you be creative with what you already know and what you can do.”

This story was written by Molly Egan.

Anthony Adornato, an associate professor of (BDJ) in the , has been named a Fulbright Specialist to train journalists in Kosovo on best practices for reporting across platforms.

Anthony Adornato

The BDJ department chair, will travel to the southeast European country in the summer of 2025 for the nearly three-week Fulbright Specialist assignment. Adornato will train staff at Radio Television of Kosovo on new trends in media and communication.

�ճ�� , which is part of the larger Fulbright Program, was established in 2001 by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. It is designed to (two to six weeks) for faculty and professionals from the United States.

Previously, Adornato was named a Fulbright Scholar in 2020 and spent a semester teaching and conducting research at universities in Milan. Adornato explored the impact of mobile and social media on journalism and journalism education in Italy.

Colleen Heflin

Colleen Heflin, professor of public administration and international affairs, has been appointed to a three-year term on the Committee on National Statistics at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

The committee’s mission is to provide advice to the federal government and advance the quality of statistical information for public and private sector decision-making. It conducts studies on data and methods for topics related to the economy, public health, education, immigration, poverty and other public policy issues. Established in 1972, it provides an independent review of federal statistical activities and has created over 300 publications.

Heflin is a senior research associate at the Center for Policy Research, a research affiliate at the Center for Aging and Policy Studies and the Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion and Population Health, and a faculty affiliate at the Aging Studies Institute.

Her areas of expertise include food insecurity, nutrition, welfare policy and the well-being of vulnerable populations. She received a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 2002 and has over 20 years of experience working with state and local administrative data. She founded the University of Missouri Federal Statistical Research Data Center and the Missouri Population, Education and Health Center. She has engaged with federal policymakers, recently providing testimony to Congress on veteran food security, and has provided technical assistance to states working to improve access to nutrition assistance programs. She has also worked with county agencies to redesign Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) application processes.

Heflin’s research has helped document the causes and consequences of food insecurity, identify the barriers and consequences of participation in nutrition programs, and understand the changing role of the public safety net in the lives of low-income Americans. It has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Russell Sage Foundation. She has received numerous honors, including the American Sociological Association’s W. Richard Scott Award for Distinguished Scholarship.

Story by Michael Kelly

She is a member of the Student Association’s Sustainability Forum, and she has spent time in the greater Syracuse community as a volunteer youth language instructor and as a researcher to understand residents’ civic engagement preferences. Her many pursuits also include work with the Maxwell-based Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion and Population Health to publish a brief on a topic she is deeply interested in—environmental racism and injustice.

Zepeda is one of nine Maxwell students who were honored with Centennial Scholar Awards at the school’s Centennial Celebration held Friday, Oct. 18, in the University’s Goldstein Auditorium. The celebration and awards were supported with generous sponsorships from the family of Sean O’Keefe ’78 M.P.A., University Professor and Phanstiel Chair in Leadership, and Maxwell Advisory Board members Cathy Daicoff ’79 M.P.A. and Stephen Hagerty ’93 M.P.A. Hagerty is also a Syracuse University trustee.

Five undergraduates and four graduate students were selected from hundreds of applicants. Each was required to submit a statement describing how their aspirations align with the Maxwell School’s ideals of engaged citizenship and public service.

“To me, public service represents an opportunity to put the public good at the forefront. It entails putting citizens first and actively listening. It means ensuring that every citizen has the same rights and access to feel seen and heard. It means delivering on the needs of the people in my home country as well as abroad,” wrote Zepeda, who is from Honduras.

Before coming to Maxwell, she interned with the United Nations in Honduras, an experience that provided a unique front-row seat to issues central to her interests and career aspirations, including the environment and Indigenous rights.

“I really wanted to gain the skills necessary to tackle the problems affecting vulnerable populations,” she says. “I miss home a lot, and I care about the people and the circumstances. I feel responsible to make a difference.”

In addition to Zepeda, Centennial Scholars are as follows:

Undergraduate Students

Adam Baltaxe of Arlington, Virginia, is pursuing a dual degree in international relations and Spanish language, literature and culture. The senior is currently an advisory board member for Search for Common Ground’s national “Blueprint for Belonging” project which seeks to bring students from diverse perspectives together in colleges across the country. He is also the fundraising chair for Save a Child’s Heart SU, the Jewish representative for Student Assembly of Interfaith Leaders and a volunteer for Global Medical Brigades, the Refugee Assistance Program and WCNY’s new Spanish radio station. Baltaxe is a Remembrance Scholar and is a recipient of several honors, including the Coronat Scholarship, IR Distinction and Jewish-Muslim Fellowship. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Sigma Iota Rho, Phi Kappa Alpha and Muslim Students’ Association, as well as the multicultural/faith chair for Hillel. He aspires to work internationally, bringing people together through dialogue and resolving conflict.

Undergraduate honorees with Dean David M. Van Slyke are, from left to right, Adam Baltaxe, Jorge Morales, Anna Rupert, Nathan Torabi and Mariana Zepeda.

Jorge Morales of East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, is a junior studying history and anthropology. A Success Scholar, Morales is a member of the editorial board for CHRONOS, the Syracuse University undergraduate history journal. He is also the vice president of the Syracuse chapter of Brighten A Day, a nonprofit dedicated to fighting isolation through letters, care packages and video messages. Morales has supported the work of Tessa Murphy, associate professor of history, to transcribe the 1813 Registry of Enslaved Persons in Trinidad. Through his research, he hopes to gain insights into the impacts of slavery and share the personal experiences of enslaved peoples. He plans to use the skills he gains at Maxwell to collaborate with museums and historical sites to better recognize and address issues of intolerance and systemic inequity.

Anna Rupert of Arlington, Virginia, is pursuing degrees in economics and philosophy. The junior is a forward for the women’s soccer team and has received several academic recognitions, including having been named to the All-ACC Academic Team, All-ACC Honor Roll and College Sports Communicators Academic All-District Team. She is a member of the Renée Crown honors program and serves on the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, focusing on community outreach and providing support to other student athletes. Rupert is a research assistant for the economics department and is a discussion leader for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. In the summer of 2024, she plans to intern in the treasury department at Ford Motor Company in Detroit. After graduating, Rupert hopes to play soccer professionally in Europe before transitioning to a career in finance.

Nathan Torabi of Visalia, California, is majoring in political science; citizenship and civic engagement; and law, society and policy. A junior, he is an inaugural member of the Next Generation Leadership Corps, as well as a student ambassador for the Maxwell School and the College of Arts and Sciences and OttoTHON, a dance fundraiser that raises funds for Children’s Miracle Network hospitals. A Coronat Scholar, he has received several other awards, including the Maxwell Philanthropic Ambassador, Paul A. Volcker Government Internship Award, the Maxwell Exemplary Student Paper Award and Michael D. Schneider Award. Currently a legislative intern for U.S. Senator Charles Schumer in Washington, D.C., he has also worked within the Syracuse Admissions Office and for an attorney’s office. Formerly a project intern with CNY Pride, Torabi aspires to attend law school and become a civil litigator to champion LGBTQ+ rights within the education system.

Graduate Students

Ferdinand Eimler of Berlin, Germany, is pursuing a master’s degree in international relations at Maxwell while also pursuing a master’s degree in public policy from the Hertie School in Berlin as part of the Atlantis Dual Degree Master’s Program. He earned a bachelor’s degree in politics and public administration from the University of Konstanz in Germany. Eimler gained professional experience in international relations at the German Federal Foreign Office, co-organizing diplomacy and foreign policy workshops across Europe for the Global Diplomacy Lab and advancing German foreign policy at the United Nations. He currently works for the Aspen Institute Germany, where he ​​​​fosters relations between state and provincial legislators from the United States, Germany and Canada. As an alumnus of the Congress Bundestag Youth Exchange (CBYX) Scholarship, Eimler aspires to a career focused on strengthening transatlantic relations, particularly between Germany and the United States.

Shown with Dean David M. Van Slyke, the four graduate students honored with Centennial Scholar Awards are, from left to right, Julia Liebell-McLean, Ferdinand Eimler, Benjamin Katz and Kaythari Maw.

Benjamin Katz of New York City is a second-year political science Ph.D. student studying international relations and public policy and administration. His research interests include secession and sovereignty, conflict and violence, and international organizations. He is particularly interested in the politics of the United Kingdom and the European Union. Katz is a research associate in the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs and the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration. He is also a research assistant for a National Science Foundation project on intra- and interstate conflict. Outside of Maxwell, he is a Ph.D. research fellow at the Foreign Military Studies Office, a component of the United States Army Training and Doctrine Command. Katz earned an A.B. in government and history from Hamilton College in 2020 and worked in the financial services industry before he began his Maxwell studies.

Julia Liebell-McLean of central New Jersey is pursuing a dual master’s degree in public administration and international relations. She studied in France during high school, and later, as a Fulbright Scholar and English teaching assistant, spent nine months living in Senegal, inspiring her passion for global affairs. She received a bachelor’s degree from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and has interned with the Senate Office of Cory A. Booker, the French Institute in New York City and the U.S. Department of State. Earlier this year, Liebell-McLean was also named a 2024 Robertson Fellow, one of the most prestigious awards for graduate students at Maxwell. She hopes to pursue a career with the State Department furthering diplomacy with African countries.

Kaythari Maw of Staten Island, New York, is pursuing a Ph.D. in economics, and says she is the first female Burmese American to do so. Maw earned a master’s degree in regional science from Cornell University, where she was awarded the Southeast Asia Foreign Language Area Studies Fellowship to study Burmese. Prior to that she earned a bachelor’s degree in economics at Columbia University’s Barnard College. At Cornell and Columbia, she helped to re-establish the Myanmar Students associations; she is currently working on creating a similar organization at Syracuse. With her research, Maw hopes to reduce the gap in literature about the economic circumstances of Burmese diaspora.

Story by Mikayla Melo

It’s a thorny issue, raising questions of students’ and parents’ rights, school safety, academic performance—and mental health.

A scan of recent news stories offers a snapshot of various positions: banning devices is good for “” it could mitigate and , and even help social media. On the other hand, smartphones help parents in an emergency and, sometimes, they are for instruction or even for monitoring health.

One scholar addressing the potential harms caused by overuse of smartphones—in and out of school—is , assistant teaching professor of in the .

One of Butler’s research and clinical interests is process addictions in children and adolescents, a topic closely related to the smartphone question. Given the groundswell of concern —not to mention high-profile lawsuits for and —about young people’s online habits, the School of Education asked Butler about the connection between process addictions, phones, apps, and mental health—and what, if anything, schools can do.

As a mental health counselor, how does your clinical work and scholarship frame how you view the controversy surrounding smartphone bans in schools?

My interest centers around the overuse of smartphones and other devices by children that can develop into what mental health professionals refer to as a “process addiction.” We become concerned when we see extensive attachment to the phone, including high rates of texting; addiction to online games, such as “Roblox,” or “Call of Duty”; and dependency on social media apps, such as Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok.

In general, we can say that gaming addiction affects boys more, leading to issues of quality of sleep and academic performance, while for girls social media addiction is more of an issue, leading to self-esteem, body image and other mental health challenges.

The data bears out these concerns. say they play video games, while children 8 to 17 years of age spend an average of one and a half to two hours daily playing online. Statistics reveal that 8.5% of children and teenagers younger than 18 have .

Meanwhile, associate the absence of their phone with at least one of three emotions: loneliness, being upset, or feeling anxious. Girls are more likely than boys to feel anxious or lonely without their phones. Interestingly, some unease is self-reported: 54% of US teens aged 13 to 17 say they spend too much time on their phones.

Sabrina Butler

How is a “process addiction” related to other kinds of addiction?

Process addictions are those compulsive behaviors where no chemical or other addictive substance is used. In addition to smartphone use, other examples include addiction to gambling, shopping, eating, self-harm, sex, and exercise.

Understanding and researching process addictions is hampered by the fact that the “” only recognizes a couple of these examples: gambling and sex addictions.

But process addictions can re-wire the brain much the same way as chemical addictions do. That is, the brain learns to reward pleasurable behaviors (such as checking the “likes” of a social post) and cravings can set in—the need to constantly look at the phone.

Nevertheless, this field is developing, and there are more studies underway, as well as more statistics from national surveys to reference.

What is the nature of your work around process addictions, both clinically and in your research and teaching?

I do a lot of work with children and process addiction in my clinical practice, and as a teacher of counselors, I help school and other counselors in training understand the signs of addiction, how to assess it and how to treat it.

In my research, I am interested in using large data sets to understand the scope of process addictions in young people in order to inform screening tools, treatments and counselor education.

What are some of the negative consequences of smartphone addiction that educators are dealing with?

There are a few. Overuse of smartphones can take away from the educational process because students’ focus is taken up by social media, texting and games. It can cause poor sleeping habits, with students catching up in the classroom or becoming increasingly absent from school. Sleep also can be disrupted by , especially about subjects that cause anxiety, and even the .

Then there are behavioral concerns. Overuse can affect young people’s social skills and interactions, with some finding difficulty making friends in real life or cultivating false friendships online (or worse, being solicited by predators posing as “friends”). We have even seen a change in how children see their futures. Anecdotally, I have heard students say they want to be “influencers” or YouTube stars when they are older.

Devices given to very young children can disrupt play and physical development. While the intentional educational use of web-based multimedia can help development in elementary-aged children, research indicates that screen media usage is negatively associated with fine motor skill development across time, with a particular impact on preschool-aged children.

Moreover, the age of first use is correlated to addiction; thus, the younger the child, the more likely they are to develop long-term struggles. Again, anecdotally, devices given to very young children can lead to some becoming more interested in watching another child play online rather than play—and thus physically, socially, and emotionally develop—themselves.

As a mental health professional, where do you stand on the question of smartphone bans in schools?

It’s a hard call. I think if you took out the unfortunate threat of school shootings in the United States —and therefore the understandable need for parents to stay in touch with their children—then I would say there should definitely be some restrictions on smartphone use.

But even so, one should balance the threat of an emergency in one school against how smartphone addiction is affecting the development of whole school districts. Then again, there are children’s and parent’s rights at stake, so it will be interesting to see how the legal cases play out.

I do believe there has to be some kind of intervention. An abstention-only approach probably won’t work, so the solution would have to involve harm reduction. There might be compromises and practical workarounds to be found—such as those that are used during exams, when devices are dropped in a basket at the front of the classroom—but it will be hard for a school district to find limits and make everyone happy.

What advice do you have for parents and educators concerned about signs of smartphone addiction in a young person?

I have a couple of guidelines to consider. In general, mental health professionals suggest restricting smartphone use to less than two hours at a time. Also, social media should not be put into the hands of children and young adolescents under the age of 13, advice that is in line with many age barriers put forward by social media companies.

Common warning signs of addiction include: negative consequences associated with the addictive behavior; increased intensity or time spent on the behavior and/or the amount of time spent limits the child’s ability to sleep, do homework, spend time with family, etc.; using the behavior as an escape from negative moods; unsuccessful attempts to control or reduce the behavior; and/or emotional dysregulation—that is, excessive anger, sadness, or anxiety—when the child cannot engage in the addictive behavior.

Ian Glazman-Schillinger

Glazman-Schillinger, in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, is one of 11 doctoral candidates who received the award, which comes with $25,000. The funding supports researchers investigating the origins of serious violence as well as responses to it across historical and contemporary contexts in the U.S. and other countries. Recipients this year are studying a range of topics, including political extremism, gender violence and the use of political rhetoric to undercut democratic movements.

Glazman-Schillinger’s dissertation is titled “White Supremacy Goes Online: The Early Digital History of White Power Activists and how they Shaped the Internet, 1984-1999.” His research examines how far-right white power groups used digital technologies and computer networks in the 1980s and 1990s to recruit, communicate and evade government surveillance and infiltration. He traces white power groups’ transition from the traditional hierarchical organizations of the early-to-mid-20th century to current, more diffuse digital formations. His work builds on scholarship in the fields of information studies, computer mediated communication and the digital humanities, and utilizes methodologies that acknowledge the unique qualities of born-digital materials.

A fifth-year doctoral candidate in the history department, Glazman-Schillinger is a graduate research associate in the Campbell Public Affairs Institute (CPAI). He has taught courses on American history to 1865, early modern European history and modern European history. His advisor, Margaret Susan Thompson, is associate professor of history and political science, and senior research associate for CPAI and for the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration.

“His dissertation project, focusing on born-digital primary materials from the earliest years of online communication, will profoundly illuminate our understanding of hate groups and the radical right in the United States as both historical phenomena and ongoing foci of intellectual, political and even moral concern,” says Thompson. “Ian’s work is not only original but undeniably crucial in 21st century political and scholarly contexts that acknowledge the salience and danger of extremism—although it is considerably less aware than it might be of how extremists organize, communicate and operate.”

Glazman-Schillinger was previously awarded Syracuse University’s Hotchkiss-Ketcham Fellowship as part of a multi-year fellowship package and previously held a nominated position as a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. He has published work about online and internet hate crimes, the digital origins of the alt-right and far-right movements in the late 20th century. He has presented conference papers at the 2023 Organization of American Historians’ Annual Conference and the UK-based Historians of the Twentieth Century United States’ 2022 annual meeting.

Glazman-Schillinger received a master’s degree from the University of Aberdeen in 2017 and an M.Sc. in contemporary history from the University of Edinburgh in 2018.

Story by Mike Kelly

The Honorable Langston C. McKinney

On Wednesday, Oct. 30, at 4:30 p.m., political, legal and civic leaders from across the state will gather at the Honorable James C. Tormey, III Criminal Courts Building at 505 South State Street, Syracuse, for the dedication of The Hon. Langston C. McKinney Courtroom. The Hon. Langston C. McKinney L’71 served in many critical public interest leadership positions and applied his legal acumen across many practice areas and roles. He was appointed the first Black Syracuse City Court Judge in 1986 and served with honor, distinction and compassion until his retirement in 2010.

Judge McKinney was born in Miami, Florida, on Oct. 27, 1944. He graduated from Howard University in 1965 with a degree in chemistry and was recruited by Carrier Corporation to come to Syracuse to work as a chemist. There, he was the first Black scientist in their research and development division.

Judge McKinney served two years in the U.S. Army and then returned to Syracuse in 1968 to attend Syracuse University College of Law. While in law school, he co-founded the Syracuse chapter of the Law Students Civil Rights Research Council and would spend a summer working in the South on civil rights legal work, fueling his passion for justice. Also, while in law school, he started working for Onondaga Neighborhood Legal Services (ONLS). It was there that he came to understand the plight of people trapped in poverty and social and economic injustice. This experience sharpened the lens through which he saw the need for justice, equality and the rule of law.

Upon graduating from Syracuse Law, Judge McKinney began his legal career at ONLS as a staff attorney. Among the many causes he championed was the issue of tenants’ rights. He would later be honored by having a housing complex named after him–McKinney Manor. Judge McKinney later joined the legal staff at Hiscock Legal Aid Society, where his reputation as a criminal defense attorney began to grow. Eventually, Judge McKinney joined with two other Syracuse lawyers to form the law firm of Maye, McKinney & Melchor, the first Black law firm in Syracuse.

In 1986, Judge McKinney was appointed by Mayor Tom Young to be the first Black American Syracuse City Court Judge. He was then elected in 1987 and re-elected in 1997 and 2007. One of Judge McKinney’s proudest accomplishments was partnering with the Center for Community Alternatives to establish the Syracuse Community Treatment Court.

Although Judge McKinney retired in 2010, he remained active in the pursuit of justice. He was instrumental in founding the first African American Bar Association in Onondaga County, The William Herbert Johnson Bar Association, named after a fellow African American legal trailblazer.

“Judge McKinney had faithfully and respectfully served Syracuse as a jurist, community leader and mentor to many in the legal profession and other disciplines,” says Professor Paula Johnson, who served on the committee securing the courtroom dedication.

The ceremony will be ��(passcode 1986). A reception will follow at the CNY Philanthropy Center Ballroom.

Robert Parker

The will hold its eighth annual Supreme Court Preview on Friday, Nov. 1, from 9 a.m. to noon in the Gray Ceremonial Courtroom in Dineen Hall. , chief of the Criminal Division’s Appellate Section at the U.S. Department of Justice, will deliver the Keynote Lecture, “Supreme Court and Appellate Practice at the Department of Justice.”

Afterward, a panel discussion will examine the key cases to be heard during the 2024-2025 Supreme Court term. Panel participants will be:

• , teaching professor;
• , U.S. Magistrate Judge for the Northern District of New York;
• , College of Law dean and professor of law;
• , associate professor of law and director of the Disability Law and Policy Program; and
• , chief of the Criminal Division’s Appellate Section at the U.S. Department of Justice.

The moderator will be , vice dean and Paul E. and Hon. Joanne F. Alper ’72 Judiciary Studies Professor of Law.

This program is open to the public and has typically been approved for three CLE credits. There is no charge for this CLE program. , and contact Chris Ramsdell, office coordinator in the��Institute for the Study of the Judiciary, Politics, and the Media, with any questions.

Researchers also found continued patterns of “coordinated inauthentic behavior” among some outside organizations, including a large network of Facebook pages running ads aimed at scamming the public. The analysis found an estimated $5 million spent on ads that are potential scams, or roughly 4% of the overall ad spending by outside organizations. This translates into about 234 million impressions.

The ElectionGraph project seeks to identify misinformation trends in the U.S. presidential election and other top 2024 contests.

These are among the findings in the third quarterly report from the at the University’s����(IDJC). The report examines ads on Meta platforms, which include Facebook and Instagram, mentioning primary and general election presidential candidates between Sept. 1, 2023, and Aug. 31, 2024.

The latest report found the Democratic ticket (Biden-Harris, then Harris-Walz) outspending the Trump campaign 10-to-1—or roughly $50 million to $5 million—on Facebook and Instagram between September 2023 and August 2024. That gap expanded to 12-to-1 in the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania. But Trump outpaced Biden’s and Harris’ campaigns combined by about 5-to-1 in ads categorized as “uncivil.”

The data shows a 4-to-1 difference in impressions on the social media platforms, or about 1 billion impressions for the Democratic ticket compared with 250 million impressions for the GOP. This gap doesn’t take into account Trump-related spending on messaging on social platform X, Trump’s Truth Social network or other media platforms.

In addition to campaigns’ spending, nearly 3,500 Facebook pages from outside organizations have spent $55 million over the past year in an effort to influence the public this election season.

ElectionGraph seeks to identify misinformation trends in the U.S. presidential election and other top 2024 contests. The project is supported by a grant and use of analytics software from , the world’s leading graph database and analytics company.

The ElectionGraph team’s efforts include pinpointing origins of messages and tracing misinformation by collecting and algorithmically classifying ads run on Facebook and Instagram. ElectionGraph also has developed a publicly accessible dashboard to explore its findings.

While Meta allows approved organizations to access ad data, such data is not required to be made available—and is not similarly trackable—on TikTok, Google, YouTube or Snapchat. The findings nevertheless provide a framework to visualize the fire hose of information and misinformation targeting voters from groups with a jumble of motives, ties and trustworthiness ahead of the 2024 elections.

The Institute for Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship is a joint University initiative of the and the .

“My concern with the ongoing scams running on Facebook and Instagram is that they look like legitimate advertisements, but they are full of falsehoods and even deepfakes, further polluting the information environment and deceiving voters,”��says , a professor in the School of Information Studies and ElectionGraph’s lead researcher.

Social media scams that exploit heightened sentiments during important moments like elections have become widespread, says Jim Webber, chief scientist at Neo4j.

“This important research, enabled by Neo4j, can help voters and policymakers to distinguish legitimate actors from malicious ones hidden within complex networks,” Webber says. “Without this technology, achieving such insights would be almost impossible.”

Adds IDJC Kramer Director : “Real, bipartisan concerns about election-related violence—accentuated by assassination attempts against former President Trump—have proved no match for the magnetic pull of negative, uncivil and attack-ad campaigning that Trump himself and his rivals consider too useful to set aside.” Talev is a journalist and professor of practice in the Newhouse School.

Lamis Abdelaaty

Lamis Abdelaaty, associate professor of political science and director of undergraduate studies, has received this year’s award from the Ralph E. Montonna Endowed Fund for the Teaching and Education of Undergraduates.

Awarded by the Maxwell School, the Ralph E. Montonna Endowed Fund is intended to support a professor with notable engagement in undergraduate education. Abdelaaty is the recipient of the fund award for the 2024-25 academic year. She succeeds Maria Zhu, assistant professor of economics.

“Professor Abdelaaty is a wonderful teacher and mentor, both in and outside the classroom,” says Carol Faulkner, senior associate dean for academic affairs. “She is deeply invested in the success of our students, and I’m thrilled to see her receive this recognition.”

Abdelaaty specializes in international refugee politics. She has taught several upper-level courses, including Humanitarian Action in World Politics, Human Rights and Global Affairs, and Refugees in International Politics. She is a senior research associate at the Campbell Public Affairs Institute and the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration.

In 2023 she was named a residential fellow for the journal Migration Politics; she spent a week as a fellow-in-residence at the University of Amsterdam. Also last year, Abdelaaty received a $70,000 grant from the Gerda Henkel Foundation to support the research for her second book, “Refugees in Crisis.” The book will analyze what constitutes a refugee crisis and the factors influencing international responses to crises. Research for the book was also supported with grant funding from the Syracuse Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Engagement (SOURCE).

In 2020, Abdelaaty received the Laura J. and L. Douglas Meredith Teaching Recognition Award for Early Career Performance from Syracuse University. In addition, she has received several awards for her first book, “Discrimination and Delegation: Explaining State Responses to Refugees” (Oxford University Press, 2021), including the Distinguished Book Award from the International Studies Association Ethnicity, Nationalism, & Migration Studies (ENMISA) section. and Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association Migration and Citizenship section. The book examined why countries open their borders to some refugees while blocking others, and why countries give the United Nations control of asylum procedures and refugee camps.

Story by Mikayla Melo

Laufey performed “From the Start” and other hits from her decorated album “Bewitched.”(Photo by Arnold Turner)

Grammy Award-winning artist captivated the crowd at an invite-only launch party for Syracuse University’s new music business master’s program at Spotify Studios in Los Angeles.

Laufey performed “From the Start” and other hits from her decorated album “Bewitched” at the event Tuesday night, which also saw the announcement of a new scholarship in the artist’s name that supports international students or those in need of financial aid in the Bandier music business master’s program.

The , starting classes in summer 2025, expands on the success of the prestigious undergraduate program in the recording and entertainment industries in the . Both degree programs are named after Martin Bandier ’62, the legendary music publishing executive and University Life Trustee. The master’s program was created in partnership with the , and reflects a true, cross-disciplinary, hands-on approach to study.

The Laufey Scholarship for Graduate Students will provide $100,000 over the next 10 years to the Bandier program.

In February, Laufey won the Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album award at the 2024 Grammys. She has deep connections to the Bandier program through her core team, which includes manager Max Gredinger ’13, of Foundations Music; attorney Harry Roberts ’12, of Mark Music & Media Law; and publisher Gabz Landman ’12, of Warner Chappell Music.

The team also includes digital marketing manager Izzy Newirth ’23 and management coordinator Kaylee Barrett ’24, of Foundations.

“I’m incredibly proud to support this scholarship and be part of such an important moment for the Bandier program. The talent, knowledge and passion that my team brings to our work every day are a direct result of the incredible education they received at Syracuse University,” Laufey said.

“I hope this scholarship will help future students find the same success and fulfillment in the music industry,” Laufey added.

The is regularly recognized as one of the top undergraduate music business programs in the country. Billboard magazine’s list of the world’s top music business schools has always included the Bandier program.

Laufey (left) and Bill Werde, director of the Bandier undergraduate program (Photo by Arnold Turner)

Created in 2006 in the College of Visual and Performing Arts’ Setnor School of Music, the Bandier program was the brainchild of three Newhouse alumni: Rob Light ’78, John Sykes ’77 and the late Phil Quartararo ’77, who suggested the concept to Martin Bandier.

The program established a solid foundation and grew at VPA before moving to Newhouse in 2017. Bandier students still take classes at VPA, as well as the .

The new will offer students the same top features that set apart the undergraduate program, delivering hands-on experiences and training for cutting-edge skills needed to make students job-ready upon graduation, as well as providing access to the large and loyal networks of Bandier and Newhouse alumni.

A comprehensive curriculum will cover topics, including music law, copyright, social media and the latest data tools used by top industry professionals. A key feature of the program will be a semester based in Los Angeles that provides students with valuable industry experience.

The new master’s program will be led by Bill Werde, director of the Bandier undergraduate program and former editorial director of Billboard.

“An overwhelming percentage of our undergrads are leveraging the skills, network and experiences built in the Bandier program into jobs upon graduation,” Werde said. “We look forward to welcoming these new graduate students into our community and working with them to develop the core that they need to succeed.”

Mark J. Lodato, dean of the Newhouse School, expressed gratitude to Laufey and her team for their commitment to helping Bandier master’s students succeed.

“Through the Bandier master’s program, students aspiring to work in the music industry will have exciting opportunities to hone the skills they learn in the classroom in real-world settings,” Lodato said. “We are so grateful to the Bandier alumni, who play pivotal roles working with such a gifted artist like Laufey, for setting examples for career success.”

Selina Gallo-Cruz

Selina Gallo-Cruz, associate professor of sociology, is the latest Maxwell School faculty member to be named an O’Hanley Faculty Scholar. She was selected in recognition of her outstanding teaching and scholarship.

Gallo-Cruz will hold the title for three years and will receive financial support for her research and teaching.

The designation is made possible through the O’Hanley Endowed Fund, which was established by Maxwell Advisory Board Chairman and University Trustee Ronald O’Hanley III, chairman and chief executive officer of State Street Global Advisors and a 1980 graduate of the Maxwell School with a B.A. in political science.

Gallo-Cruz is a senior research associate in the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration, where she co-directs the advocacy and activism research team. She is also a research affiliate for the Program on Latin America and the Caribbean.

Gallo-Cruz’s scholarly work has focused on gender, violence, non-violence and social movements in a comparative context. She recently edited “Feminism, Violence and Nonviolence” (Edinburgh University Press, 2024) and authored “Political Invisibility and Mobilization: Women Against State Violence in Argentina, Yugoslavia, and Liberia” (Routledge, 2021), which won the American Sociological Association’s Peace, War and Social Conflict section’s Outstanding Book Award. In 2021, she was honored as a Democracy Visiting Fellow with the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Harvard Kennedy School and was awarded the Fulbright-Tampere University Scholar Award. Her current research focuses on comparative policy and legislative conflicts over climate change and human trafficking.

Carol Faulkner, senior associate dean for academic affairs, says Gallo-Cruz enhances the Maxwell School’s emphasis on research with a public impact. Faulkner praises Gallo-Cruz as an “outstanding and internationally recognized scholar of social movements and policy change, who engages students around challenging issues facing the U.S. and the world.”

Prior to joining Maxwell, Gallo-Cruz taught at the College of the Holy Cross and Emory University.

Story by Mikayla Melo

Chancellor Kent Syverud (left) and Newhouse School Dean Mark J. Lodato flank Donald Newhouse after the plaza at the Newhouse complex was renamed for his family to celebrate the school’s 60th anniversary. (Photo by Chuck Wainwright)

The welcomed Donald Newhouse and his family back to Syracuse University to mark the with an afternoon full of celebratory events highlighted by the renaming of the plaza in between the school’s three buildings in the family’s honor.

The festivities Wednesday included a special luncheon, a tour of the complex for the family and a ceremony on the plaza, where Chancellor Kent Syverud and Newhouse Dean Mark J. Lodato unveiled the new name as hundreds watched from the Einhorn Family Walk.

The owner of Advance Publications, Donald Newhouse, is the patriarch of one of the first families of American publishing. Advance was founded by his father, Samuel I. Newhouse, in 1922.

Donald Newhouse delivers remarks during the 60th anniversary ceremony. (Photo by Malcolm Taylor)

In remarks on the plaza, Donald Newhouse recounted how he observed a meeting in the late 1950s between his father and then-University Chancellor William P. Tolley during which the idea for what would become the Newhouse School was conceived.

Donald Newhouse was one of the honored guests on Aug. 5, 1964, when President Lyndon B. Johnson joined S.I. Newhouse to . That day also happened to be Donald Newhouse’s 35th birthday.

“I am fortunate to have the chance in the same month that I celebrate my 95th birthday, to look back with overwhelming pride at the record of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. It is one of the great joys of my life,” Donald Newhouse said Wednesday.

“Thank you all for helping me celebrate this anniversary, and for your role in realizing the dream of my father and Chancellor Tolley.”

The Newhouse family is one of the largest donors in the University’s history, including the $75 million pledge by the Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation to the Newhouse School in 2020. That pledge was the single largest gift in the University’s history.

“There are so many amazing alumni of this school that I’ve met all over the world—editors, broadcasters, leaders in print, cable news and network newsrooms. They founded and led radio stations, PR agencies, advertising firms, countless ventures in the business, digital music and entertainment industries,” said before unveiling the plaza’s new name.

“All of them amazing people, all made possible because of the transformational gifts of Donald Newhouse and the Newhouse Foundation,” he added. “You’ve really, in a meaningful sense, shaped the trajectory of the University, the Newhouse School and most importantly, the careers of tens of thousands of our students and our graduates and faculty.”

Today, the Newhouse School offers and more than a dozen covering the gamut of fields in media and communications. The school also its first fully online bachelor’s program, in strategic communications, this year.

But what will not change, Lodato said, is an unwavering dedication to journalism education.

pledged to continue to work with newsrooms and journalism organizations on key issues like filling news deserts, and striving to ensure the diversity of newsroom staffs and leadership accurately reflects the communities they serve.

He cited expanded opportunities for students to hone their skills through study-away semesters in , or , or special trips such as of the recent Democratic and Republican presidential nominating conventions for professional media outlets.

Newhouse also combined the broadcast and digital journalism, and magazine, news and digital journalism programs, into starting this fall following state approval, the result of years of discussion with faculty.

Students will still choose one of two tracks under the new journalism major structure—broadcast and digital journalism, or magazine, news and digital journalism. But Lodato noted the change is reflective of how the Newhouse School pivots to meet the needs of an industry which increasingly is looking for journalists who can tell stories on multiple platforms.

“I can think of no better way of recognizing the vision and generosity of Mr. Newhouse and his extraordinary family than to reinforce our steadfast commitment to journalism and journalism education,” Lodato said.

Hundreds of people gathered on the Einhorn Family Walk for the ceremony to honor the Newhouse School’s 60th anniversary. (Photo by Chuck Wainwright)

Newhouse was joined Wednesday by several members of his family, including sons Steven and Michael, the co-presidents of Advance. Larry Kramer ’72, vice chair of the University Board of Trustees, offered remarks at the luncheon, as did Newhouse Dean Emeritus and , Kramer Director of the Syracuse University , and a professor of practice of journalism at the Newhouse School.

David Zaslav, the president and CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, spoke during a videotaped message.

Marie Achkar, a senior in broadcast and digital journalism, spoke on behalf of students at the luncheon. Jada Knight, a senior in television, radio and film, spoke on students’ behalf during the plaza ceremony, which was followed by a reception for the family, students, faculty, staff and alumni.

Martin Bandier

Both degree programs are named after Martin Bandier ’62, the legendary music publishing executive and University Life Trustee. The is regularly recognized as one of the preeminent undergraduate music business programs in the country.

The new will offer students the same top features that set apart the undergraduate program, delivering hands-on experiences, training for cutting-edge skills needed to make students job-ready upon graduation and access to the large and loyal networks of Bandier and Newhouse alumni.

Billboard magazine has never published its list of the world’s top music business schools without including the Bandier program.

“Our goal at the Bandier program has always been to be the premier music business school, offering the most comprehensive and cutting-edge education while forging top-tier industry connections,” Bandier says. “With this new master’s program, we’re taking it to the next level, shaping future music leaders who are equipped, connected and ready to make their mark.”

Bill Werde

Launching in fall 2025, the Bandier music business master’s program provides a true multidisciplinary education to prepare students for their first job in the music industry. The comprehensive program will cover subjects that include the fundamental rights, royalties and deal-making approaches of the modern music business, across the label, publishing, management, streaming and live sectors, and all genres.

The core music business instruction will allow students to be well-versed on the basics of everything from music law and copyright to current social media and data tools in use by top companies today. Students will also be able to spend a to work in the heart of the music industry.

The new master’s program will be overseen by , who is also director of the Before joining the Newhouse School, Werde served as editorial director of Billboard, which won a 2010 Ellie Award for Digital Media from the American Society of Magazine Editors during Werde’s tenure. Under his direction, Billboard also earned Eddie Awards for Best Media and Entertainment Publication from Folio magazine in 2006 and 2007.

Mark J. Lodato

“Breaking into the music industry can be daunting. If you have great instincts and passion for what fans love in music and how those tastes evolve, the new music business master’s program will give you all the access, skills and network you need for an incredibly fulfilling career in the music industry,” Werde says. “The Bandier program will open doors for students for the rest of their lives.”

The program presents “a fantastic opportunity for college graduates to acquire the dynamic skills and gain the hands-on experiences that will help them succeed in the thriving music business,” Newhouse Dean Mark J. Lodato says. “We are eternally grateful at Syracuse University for the support of Marty Bandier and his enthusiasm to help the Newhouse School provide a first-class education for students aspiring to work in the recording and entertainment industries.”

Lauryn Gouldin (Photo by Marilyn Hesler)

, Crandall Melvin Professor of Law and a 2022-25 Laura J. & L. Douglas Meredith Professor of Teaching Excellence, is one of three researchers on the��project, “.”��She and , assistant professor of computer science at the University of Virginia (formerly of Syracuse University) and , associate professor of computer science and engineering at Washington University in St. Louis received a $600,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) grant for the research. They are examining three issues: the uniformity and fairness of criminal court-date scheduling processes, if individual circumstances are considered when setting court dates, and whether a “smarter” computerized system can produce more equity and efficiency in those processes.

Ensuring that defendants who are released before trial return to court as scheduled is one of the primary goals of the pretrial process, Gouldin says. “Fortunately, data across jurisdictions suggest that most defendants show up for court as required. With bail reform efforts in many jurisdictions leading to higher rates of pretrial release, courts are focused on ensuring that pretrial appearance rates remain high,” she says.

Scheduling court appearances on dates and at times that work for defendants will help keep pretrial appearance rates high and avoid court system inefficiencies, she believes. Many factors—often legitimate hardships—can influence whether a defendant appears in court when scheduled. Gouldin says those factors are not consistently considered by courts and there is little uniformity in how appearance dates are scheduled from court to court.

The researchers are working to produce a system that predicts dates and times when defendants are more likely to appear versus being assigned an arbitrary court date or time. They believe having that knowledge, along with more flexibility in scheduling court dates—such as setting evening or weekend appearance dates—could improve pretrial appearance rates and create a more equitable scheduling process overall.

No-Show Factors

“Whether a defendant can appear in court when assigned depends on individual circumstances. Some may have work or school obligations or need to find childcare or arrange transportation. Others having substance addictions or mental health issues may be more at risk to miss dates; some defendants just don’t understand the court system; and people with disabilities may face specific challenges getting to court on time. In addition, some defendants who must repeatedly return to court can wait all day for their cases to be called, then find out the proceedings are postponed for a month,” Gouldin says.

But criminal courts can be inflexible, she adds. “Maintaining a perfect attendance record under these circumstances, and when so many court appearances are adjourned seems especially unreasonable. I believe courts can likely improve pretrial appearance rates by developing more flexible scheduling practices that account for these challenges.”

Data Input

This summer, Gouldin is working with research assistants to develop partnerships with judges, court administrators, pretrial service offices and criminal defense organizations in Syracuse and across New York State to collect data on the information that courts consider and the processes they use to schedule criminal cases.

Fioretto and Yeoh will take that data and apply what they call “” a scheduling approach that integrates machine learning algorithms with mathematical optimization and computerized logical reasoning. The AI-based approach aims to predict dates and times when an individual would be more likely to be able to appear in court. The researchers will incorporate defendants’ potential constraints into the date predictions and then develop mechanisms to ensure that court appearances are scheduled fairly for defendants of different races and genders.

Time, Money Costs

Fairness is an important consideration because judges can impose consequences for missing scheduled appearances even when defendants have justifiable reasons for not showing up, according to Gouldin. “Judges often make high-stakes decisions that implicate fundamental liberty interests, such as detaining defendants before trial or imposing bail, electronic monitoring, pretrial supervision or curfews. Failures to appear also become part of a defendant’s court record and may impact future pretrial liberty.”

The researchers are also mindful of the court’s administrative efficiency goals. Missed court dates mean inconveniences and costs of time and money for judges, attorneys, court personnel, witnesses and other defendants whose cases may be delayed as a result, as well.

Phase 2

Gouldin hopes eventually to gather court appearance data that will include defendants’ demographic details to assess whether specific factors affect the ability or inability to meet a pre-set court appointment. That step could reveal further ways to increase fairness in scheduling, she says. Having individuals return for their court appearances is more important than ever now, Gouldin says, because pretrial reforms in the U.S. over the past 10 years have overhauled traditional money bail systems so that more defendants are released before trial.

Gouldin’s pre-trial appearance work has been cited in federal court decisions, in state and federal amicus briefs and in testimony to the House Judiciary Committee. In 2022, she served as a consulting expert for federal litigation where a Tulsa County, Oklahoma money bail system was eventually deemed unconstitutional. Her article, “Keeping Up Appearances,” an analysis of law and policies governing pretrial appearance, which has been developed in part with the support of the NSF grant, is due to be published in the University of California Davis Law Review later this year.

Several Maxwell School faculty have been promoted to leadership roles, including Junko Takeda, who has been named chair of the Citizenship and Civic Engagement (CCE) Undergraduate Program after serving in an interim role since July 2023, and Leonard M. Lopoo, who began as chair of the Public Administration and International Affairs Department in July 2024.

Junko Takeda

Takeda, professor of history, was named interim chair in the spring of 2023. Her research and teaching interests include the histories of citizenship, early modern globalization, revolutions, migration, displacement and disease. She has written two monographs, “Between Crown and Commerce: Marseille and the Early Modern Mediterranean” (Johns Hopkins, 2011), and “Iran and a French Empire of Trade, 1700–1808: The Other Persian Letters” (Liverpool University Press, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, 2020). Her two books-in-progress explore migration, dispossession, and ethnic and religious violence in the early modern world. Takeda’s additional interests include Asian-American history and Zainichi Korean history.

Takeda is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards. At Syracuse she has received the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Award for Research and Teaching, and she was named the inaugural O’Hanley Faculty Scholar and Daicoff Faculty Scholar. She also received the Junior Meredith Teaching Recognition Award as an assistant professor, and the Excellence in Graduate Teaching Award from the Graduate School in 2023.

Leonard Lopoo

Lopoo is professor, chair and associate dean of public administration and international affairs, the Paul Volcker Chair in Behavioral Economics, and a senior research associate in the Center for Policy Research. He succeeds Colleen Heflin, professor of public administration and international affairs.

While chair, Lopoo will continue to serve as director of the Maxwell X Lab, which he co-founded in 2017 with Joe Boskovski G’14.

Lopoo applies behavioral public administration principles to improve the performance of government agencies and nonprofit organizations. His research also focuses on family matters, ranging from fertility and marriage to maternal employment and the social welfare policies designed to assist the low-income population. He has published work in several journals, including Demography, Journal of Health Economics, the Journal of Marriage and the Family, and Journal of Policy Analysis and Management.

His research has been supported by numerous federal agencies and foundations, including the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Institute on Aging, Pew Charitable Trusts, the United States Department of Agriculture and the Allyn Family Foundation. His honors have included the Birkhead-Burkhead Teaching Excellence Award, the Excellence in Graduate Education Faculty Recognition Award, the Meredith Professors Recognition Award and the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Prize.

Additionally, three faculty members have assumed director roles for the 2024-25 academic year: Christopher Faricy, Sebastian Karcher and Amy Lutz.

Christopher Faricy

Faricy, associate professor of political science and the inaugural Hicker Professor of Renewing Democratic Community, succeeds Grant Reeher as director of the Campbell Public Affairs Institute. Faricy is the co-director of the American Policy Agendas Project, a multi-institution initiative that uses data to trace changes in the national policy agenda and public policy outcomes of the United States. He is also a research affiliate for the Center for Policy Research and the Center for Policy Design and Governance. He researches American politics, social policy, income inequality, tax policy and public opinion on government spending.

He authored “Welfare for the Wealthy: Parties, Social Spending, and Inequality in the United States” (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and co-wrote “The Other Side of the Coin: Public Opinion toward Social Tax Expenditures” (Russel Sage Foundation, 2021). He has received funding from the Russell Sage Foundation for his research on social, political and economic inequality and he has been cited by numerous media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Forbes and The Washington Post.

Sebastian Karcher

Karcher, a research associate professor in the political science department, recently became director of the Center for Qualitative and Multi-Method Inquiry. He also directs the related Qualitative Data Repository. His work has been published in numerous journals across traditional disciplinary lines, including the Data Science Journal, International Studies Quarterly and Qualitative Health Research. In June 2024, he started a four-year tenure as an associate editor of the American Political Science Review. He has received funding from organizations such as the National Science Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Sloan Foundation.

Amy Lutz

Lutz, associate professor of sociology, is director of the Social Science Ph.D. Program. A senior research associate for the Center for Policy Research, she studies children of immigrants and inequalities related to race, ethnicity and education. Her work has been published in journals such as City & Community, and Sociology of Education and has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation and CUSE grants. Additionally, she is co-author of “Parenting in Privilege or Peril: How Social Inequality Enables or Derails the American Dream” (Teachers College Press, 2021).

“I am grateful to these highly accomplished scholars, instructors and outstanding citizens of the school for taking on the leadership mantle and providing our community with strong experience and a deep appreciation for our mission and goals,” says Dean David M. Van Slyke.

David Popp

David Popp, professor of public administration and international affairs and Caroline Rapking Faculty Scholar in Public Administration and Policy, is helping lead a National Academy of Sciences committee studying the role and impacts of the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs at the U.S. Department of Energy.

The ad hoc committee will study how the SBIR and STTR programs stimulate innovation and engage with small businesses.�� They will evaluate the Department of Energy’s outreach to potential SBIR/STTR applicants, with the goal of better understanding the potential applicant pool and the challenges faced by of women-owned and minority-owned businesses. The committee will consider barriers to and opportunities for collaboration among small businesses and research institutions.

Popp is co-chair of the committee, along with Timothy B. Folta, professor at the University of Connecticut. The group recently convened for a two-day meeting with guest speakers in Washington, D.C. They will produce a consensus report with their findings and recommendations.

“Professor Popp’s selection to co-chair this committee is an honor that speaks highly of his expertise and leadership,” says Shana Kushner Gadarian, associate dean for research and Merle Goldberg Fabian Professor of Excellence in Citizenship and Critical Thinking. “His contributions will not only support the National Academy of Sciences’ work but will also bring benefits back to Maxwell as he will be able to share this important policy conversation with students and colleagues.”

Popp is a senior research associate for the Center for Policy Research and the Center for Environmental Policy and Administration. Additionally, he is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and a research network member in the Energy and Climate Economics Research Group of CESifo.

He researches environmental policy and the economics of technological change. Much of his work focuses on the links between environmental policy and innovation, with a particular interest in how environmental and energy policies shape the development of new technologies that may be relevant for combating climate change.

His work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Sloan Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy, and has been published in a variety of economics and policy journals, including American Economic Review, the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Nature Energy, Research Policy, and the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management.

A new features a Newhouse School timeline and more information about the school’s history. The site will be updated throughout the year with anniversary-related virtual events and in-person alumni gatherings, such as Orange Central weekend.

The Newhouse 1 building was dedicated Aug. 5, 1964, during a ceremony on the Newhouse plaza featuring President Lyndon B. Johnson. The night before the dedication, S.I. Newhouse spoke during a dinner at the Hotel Syracuse to mark the momentous occasion.

“It is right and fitting that such a communications center be located within a dynamic university with world-embracing interests,” Newhouse said at the dinner. “The many fields of study provide an unparalleled opportunity for the interplay of creative talents of the first rank.”

The Newhouse School draws upon those prescient words to mark this milestone year and connect our storied history with our long-standing, forward-thinking philosophy.

Unparalleled Opportunity

The Newhouse School is proud of its ability to pivot and adjust to give students the skillset needed to thrive in the ever-evolving field of communications. Moving forward, this means in part renewing a commitment to expand partnerships and collaborations to pursue research and creative activities for students and faculty; and developing excellence and expertise in technology-driven communication tools and practices, specifically in advanced and emerging media.

World-Embracing Interests

Experiential learning opportunities around the country and globe allow Newhouse students to hone the skills they learn in the classroom from our award-winning faculty, while also helping them build their career networks. Newhouse is committed to expanding access for all Newhouse students through school programs in New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., and University programs worldwide.

President Lyndon B. Johnson cuts the ribbon at the Newhouse 1 dedication ceremony on Aug. 5, 1964. (Newhouse School at Syracuse University archival photo)

Creative Talents

The success of the Newhouse School is embodied through the generations of alumni who have walked through the halls of Newhouse and proceeded to write, produce, create and lead in their respective fields. The “Newhouse Network” supports the legacy of the Newhouse family not only through charitable giving, but by coming back to Syracuse to speak with students; offering internships, networking opportunities and job leads; and lending guidance and feedback via advisory boards and personal connections with faculty and staff.

“Newhouse remains rooted in journalism. It’s in our DNA,” Dean Mark Lodato says. “At the same time, one of the reasons our school has succeeded for so long—and graduated generations of communications professionals—is a philosophy to embrace change and lead the way in forging new frontiers.”

“Our Newhouse School community looks forward to celebrating the legacy of excellence that is rooted in the vision, generosity and commitment of S.I. Newhouse and his family.”

Terence Lau

After graduating from the in 1998, Terence Lau embarked on a legal career that took him from Detroit to France to Thailand to the U.S. Supreme Court. He worked in the Office of the General Counsel at Ford Motor Company. He served as director of ASEAN Governmental Affairs for Ford Asia Pacific Operations. He was a Judicial Fellow, working for the counselor to the chief justice of the United States.

But it was a guest speaker role at the University of Dayton (UD) that changed the course of his career. When he was invited to consider taking a faculty position there, he decided—“after a lot of thinking and introspection,” he says—to make the move to academe.

Lau, who was recently named dean of the College of Law, has held multiple academic and leadership positions in higher education since then. At UD he started as a faculty member in the School of Business Administration and went on to serve as chair of management and marketing and associate dean for undergraduate programs. He also ran faculty affairs for the University of Dayton China Institute. Lau later went to California State University, Chico, where he served as dean of the College of Business, interim dean of the College of Engineering, Computer Science, and Construction Management, and interim provost and vice president for academic affairs. He begins his tenure at Syracuse today.

SU News sat down with Lau to learn more about him and his plans as dean.

What does it mean to you to return to your alma mater?

It’s an unbelievable opportunity. The education I received at the College of Law is central to who I am personally and professionally, and is at the center of many good things that have happened in my life. I’ve supported the college in any way I could over the years, from contributing to the campaign for the building of Dineen Hall to serving on the Board of Advisors. To now have the privilege of serving as dean is something I never would have dreamed possible. I can’t wait to get started.

What do you see as the greatest opportunities for the College of Law?

As I see it, the college has four primary strengths. The first is a longstanding reputation for academic excellence and outstanding graduates, including the current president of the United States. The second is an ability to produce innovative programs, including the first-in-nation . The third is a strong and supportive alumni network. The fourth is a diverse group of faculty experts, leaders in their field who contribute to the college’s research output and academic reputation.

Looking at these strengths, I think there are opportunities to leverage the Syracuse brand to grow JDi even more, and to continue to lead the nation in delivering high quality legal education on demand and, in the process, to continue to disrupt the legal education industry.

There are also opportunities to grow our dual-degree, blended and certificate programs, as more skilled workers seek smaller credentials and specialized legal knowledge beyond the broad-based J.D. program. I’d also love to see us tell our story in a more compelling way and to be recognized in external rankings as a top-tier law school.

Finally, as the nation’s economy continues to evolve in a post-COVID world, I see the legal industry changing to adapt to those changes, and legal education will also change. The traditional model of success as being defined by being part of “Big Law” in New York City will probably give way to a broader definition of success as a lawyer.

What are you most excited about?

I’m excited to take my wife and daughter to Dinosaur Bar-B-Que for the first time! And to explore all the beautiful places around Central New York.

At the College of Law, I’m excited to get to know our outstanding faculty and staff and listen to what they have to say about who we are, what we do, what makes us different and where we should be going. And I’m really looking forward to meeting some of our outstanding alumni who are making a big impact with their Syracuse legal education.

What are your priorities for the first year? What do you hope to have achieved in five years?

In my first year I hope to have met with every single faculty and staff member in the college in a meaningful way, to learn how I can best support them and give them the tools and resources they need to build a high performing organization. I hope to spend a significant amount of time with students in all our programs, listening to their dreams and aspirations as well as their frustrations and ideas for ways to improve their Syracuse experience. And I look forward to working with Interim Provost Lois Agnew and Chancellor Kent Syverud to continue to find ways for the college to contribute to the University’s goal of leading with distinction.

In five years, I hope we will see a law school that has moved up considerably in external rankings, with outstanding bar passage and employment outcomes, and that is recognized as a national leader in access and diversity, and in innovating new ways to meet the needs of the legal industry.

What advice do you have for incoming students?

First: Approach being a law student like it’s a job in terms of time management. It’s critical to set aside time and be really strict about academic work. When I was a law student, having nights and weekends as “me” time was really important, so I made myself a promise that if I was a law student between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., I didn’t have to be a law student after 5 p.m. or on weekends. It didn’t always work out that way, but having that understanding with myself helped me stay afloat of all the work.

Second: Make sure that self-care is high on the list. Students who are able to step away from their studies are the ones who can come back to it refreshed and energized, versus being burned out all the time.

Finally: The road to becoming a lawyer starts on the first day of law school, and the type of attorney you will become is defined early. Give some thought to what that means for you; it matters and will make a difference.

What do you do for fun?

My family and I love to travel, see new things and make new memories. And I’m an avid runner: I find it’s my most productive thinking time and a real stress reliever.

Lightning round:

Kindle/e-reader or old-school books?

Definitely old-school books.

Movies or series?

Series. These days there are so many good ones!

Take out or dine out?

Take out.

Museums or theater?

Theater.

Ocean or lake? Domestic or abroad? Beach or adventure?

Ocean. Abroad. Beach!

College sports: Yes or no? Football or basketball? Other?

Yes, and basketball!

Sleep: Night owl or early riser?

Early riser, definitely.

Favorite season?

Summer.

Something about you no one would expect?

I have a private pilot’s license and I love all things aviation related. And of course, being from the car industry, I think real cars have manual transmissions!

Noah Eagle is handling play-by-play duties for NBC’s coverage of Team USA men’s and women’s basketball at the Summer Olympics.

The Super Bowl. French Open tennis. Primetime college football and basketball games between nationally ranked opponents. The radio play-by-play voice of the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers.

In the ever-competitive field of sports broadcasting, what Noah Eagle ’19 has accomplished in his six-year professional career is quite impressive. In May, Eagle’s hard work was recognized by his peers, as he won the Sports Emmy Award for Outstanding Personality/Emerging On Air after his debut season calling “Big Ten Saturday Night,” the weekly primetime Big Ten football game broadcast on NBC and Peacock.

Noah Eagle (center) won a Sports Emmy Award for Outstanding Personality/Emerging On Air after his debut season calling “Big Ten Saturday Night,” the weekly primetime Big Ten football game broadcast on NBC and Peacock. He’s pictured with sideline reporter Kathryn Tappen (left) and color commentator Todd Blackledge.

Eagle’s ascension has been meteoric—the Clippers hired him right after he graduated with a broadcast and digital journalism degree from the —and he’s just scratching the surface of his potential. His next assignment takes him to Paris, France, as the play-by-play broadcaster for Team USA men’s and women’s basketball at the Summer Olympics.

For someone who grew up a “massive” fan of the NBA, broadcasting Team USA games at the Olympics is a “special honor,” says Eagle. Especially since he will call games involving NBA players he has long admired—like LeBron James, Kevin Durant and Steph Curry—and will be on the mic as the U.S. women’s team pursues their unprecedented eighth consecutive gold medal.

“Basketball has been a passion of mine for a long time, and when I look at this specific assignment, it’s a dream come true. Watching Team USA at the Olympics helped grow my love for the sport, especially the ‘Redeem Team’ in 2008 that brought back the gold medal for the U.S. I remember parking myself on the couch during those Olympics and watching LeBron James play with Kobe Bryant, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, Jason Kidd and Carmelo Anthony, Syracuse basketball royalty. Those were legends of the game. Now, I’m calling Team USA games with LeBron, K.D. and Steph, who are legends of the game. There’s something special about calling basketball games while representing your country,” Eagle says.

The father-son sportscasting duo of Ian Eagle ’90 (left) and Noah Eagle ’19

Sportscasting and a love for Syracuse University runs in the family. Noah’s father, Ian ’90, has handled play-by-play for CBS Sports’ NFL games since 1998 and concluded his first year as the network’s lead announcer for the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. His mother, Alisa (Terry) Eagle ’90, earned a retailing degree from what is now the , and his sister, Erin ’21, earned an advertising degree from Newhouse.

“When I’m calling games, I’ve always got an orange wristband on my right wrist that shows my Orange connection,” Eagle says. “There’s always so much love to the ’Cuse. As my mom always says, Syracuse University is our happy place.”

Before the Olympics began, Eagle sat down with SU News to discuss his “surreal” career journey, how he’s preparing to call Team USA’s basketball games and the lessons he learned from his debut performance at the Olympics in 2021.

At the age of 27, you’ve already worked the Super Bowl, served as the radio voice of the Los Angeles Clippers, called French Open tennis action and broadcast countless college football and basketball games. How would you describe your ascension in sportscasting?

Noah Eagle

It’s quite surreal. I never anticipated my career going this way, but that’s what I love about this field. You never know the path you’re going to take. Everybody’s sportscasting path is different based on timing and circumstances. I was fortunate to not only have something open up [the Clippers radio play-by-play job] but to have people who believed in me and put my name out there for that job. Olivia Stomski [director of the Newhouse Sports Media Center and professor of broadcast and digital journalism and television, radio and film] is at the top of that list, and I had so many great mentors around campus who played a massive role in my career.

I’ve gotten lucky that I’ve gotten chances to do some big things, and my viewpoint has always been if you get the chance to do the big thing, you better step up and knock it out of the park. I’ve loved every second and hope this journey continues for a long time.

How have you been preparing for the Games?

Learning about every team and putting my broadcast boards together [with key facts and figures for each team]. Before that, I read a book on the original Dream Team because I wanted to make sure I knew my history of why there weren’t professionals allowed on the United States’ teams before 1992, why they changed that rule and how that decision has impacted the Olympics. Now, it’s preparing for the men’s and women’s competitions, making sure I’m knowledgeable about the teams and players.

It’s an honor to call basketball games at the Olympics, but my preparation is no different than if I was preparing to call a high school, college or NBA game. You put the team together on your broadcast board and make sure you have all the information you think you might need. Preparing gets easier with each game because you’ve got a much better sense of the teams based on the flow of how these games go.

What lessons did you learn from your first Olympic assignment in 2021 calling 3-on-3 basketball from NBC’s headquarters?

Because of being prepared for any outcome, you’d better be ready to deliver a memorable call for the big moments that matter the most, the moments that are guaranteed to live on the longest in the gold medal games. It can’t just be the standard, run-of-the-mill call. I don’t necessarily spend the night before thinking about what I’m going to say, but before our broadcast starts, I have a general idea of the direction I’m going to go. If you’re trying to think of it in the moment, that’s when things can go awry.

Matthew Huber

But could a global event with millions of people from all over the world converging in one place ever be considered sustainable?

In this Q&A with SU News, , professor of geography and the environment in the , discusses his perspective on the 2024 Paris Olympics’ sustainability goals and broader implications around global energy equality.

The Paris 2024 Organising Committee pledged this is the most sustainable Olympics ever, but it’s still a massive operation buildup of infrastructure and a global event that brings in millions of people to one location. Can the Olympics even still be considered green?

This reminds me of the 2007 Academy Awards when “An Inconvenient Truth”—Al Gore’s breakthrough climate documentary—won an Oscar and the academy declared the award ceremony was the first one to be “carbon neutral.” People are rightly skeptical when massive, spectacular (and ostentatious) events, which entail displays of wealth and large-scale resource and energy use, declare themselves “green.”

The fact is we still live in a world where roughly 80% of all energy use comes from fossil fuels so it’s quite difficult for much to be “green” (without engaging in dubious and sometimes fraudulent practices of “carbon offsetting”) let alone such a massive undertaking such as this.

One aspect of the Paris committee’s efforts was to not have air conditioning for the athletes’ accommodations but many countries, such as the U.S. and other wealthy nations, are supplying their athletes with air conditioning. What does it say about sustainability efforts to combat climate change when wealthy countries can still do what they want while less wealthy countries do not have that same privilege?

Apartment buildings in the Olympic and Paralympic Village in Paris (Credit: @Paris2024/Rapheal Vriet)

The weird irony to me is that France has an electricity grid that is nearly 100% carbon free (notably due to the roughly 70% derived from nuclear power and the remainder from mostly renewables). So it’s not clear to me exactly why limiting AC use even makes sense from a climate perspective.

If their reasoning goes beyond climate (e.g., the larger environmental impacts from electricity use) then obviously it’s having exactly the opposite effect: prohibiting AC is leading to inefficient and haphazard efforts on the part of some countries to bring their own AC in. It would be much more rational and efficient to simply provide centralized AC to all participants.

Your point about the inequality between nations is an important one and underscores how the solution would be for France to provide decarbonized AC for all. Analogously, the world actually needs to come together to decarbonize the energy systems of rich nations, and in some cases invest in providing basic (decarbonized) energy services to poor nations. We still live in world where roughly 800 million people have zero access to electricity and roughly four times that number have very little and intermittent access. We take electricity for granted, but I believe it should be a human right.

There are discussions around future summer Olympics being moved to a different month to avoid searing hot temperatures. Is this another example of a larger global issue of how humankind will have to make these life adjustments around warming conditions?

Yes, this is what climate scholars call “adaptation.” I could imagine a world in which it would make more sense for the “Summer” Olympics to be held in spring or fall, and (sadly) it might even be really hard to hold a Winter Olympics at all (unless one plans on counting on the highly energy-intensive practice of producing snow!).

The challenge is we’ve built an entire human civilization in a period of planetary history called the “Holocene,” which has been defined by an unusually stable and warm climate. There is so much that will need to change now that it appears these conditions no longer exist.

For media who wish to schedule an interview with Huber, please reach out to Daryl Lovell, associate director of media relations, dalovell@syr.edu.

Sydney Bergan ’23 will cover the upcoming Summer Olympics in Paris as an audience editor for USA Today.

The internship that launched Sydney Bergan ’23 on a path to covering the upcoming Summer Olympics in Paris, France, started off on an unexpected trajectory.

As a junior at Syracuse University, Bergan landed an internship through the prestigious Dow Jones News Fund with McClatchy, but instead of serving as a reporter—which was her career ambition—Bergan was assigned to the digital media program as an audience engagement intern.

Bergan spent 10 days enhancing her digital media literacy skills at Arizona State University, taking curated stories and repackaging them for different audiences. From there, Bergan worked as an intern for The Charlotte Observer and The News & Observer. Before long, The Sacramento Bee hired her as an audience editor while she was still enrolled in classes at Syracuse. Now, she’s an audience editor for USA Today.

Being an audience editor was the perfect blend of content creation and newsworthiness. Bergan excelled by understanding how to create stories that resonate with audiences, and she enjoyed having conversations with people about what types of content they want to see.

Sydney Bergan

“I thought of myself as a reporter and I always knew I loved people and telling their stories,” says Bergan, who earned a magazine, news and digital journalism degree from the .

“But once I started, I just fell in love with the audience engagement work. I love the content creation and curation side of journalism. It allows me to be creative. I do a lot of content design for USA Today, coming up with stories that will reach our audiences wherever they’re looking for their content. I love looking at the analytics to see what stories, videos or graphics perform well and which ones don’t. It’s all so fascinating.”

Her next assignment will take her to Paris to create content around the Summer Olympics for USA Today. It’s a dream come true for Bergan.

“I love the Olympics. Always have. It’s crazy I’ll be covering the Summer Olympics! It just feels so surreal,” Bergan says. “I worked hard to get here, and I know I’ve got this, but there’s some imposter syndrome at play. This is a big deal. I’m working with journalists who have covered the Olympics many times before. I’m the new kid on the block and am just trying to learn as much as I can and soak it all in.”

Before she arrives in Paris, Bergan sat down with SU News to discuss her content strategy for the Olympics, the must-have interview or piece of content she’s hoping to create and the valuable lessons she learned on campus.

What does the job of an audience editor entail?

In the simplest terms, my job is to get eyes on articles and content in unique and creative ways through platforms like our website and our social media. We’re the behind-the-scenes people who use our news judgment and understanding of the platforms to determine where content will perform the best.

A lot of people say they feel they have more than enough content to consume out there, but they have a hard time breaking it down and understanding it. We do a lot in the social media video space through explainer posts on our Instagram and Facebook pages that help break down complex issues into the five things you need to know.

What’s your Olympic content strategy?

You don’t know what the big story is until you get there. I’ll be doing a lot of cultural content, showing the audience the sights and sounds of Paris during the Olympics. You have this iconic European city playing host to an iconic event. Part of my job is figuring out what people who aren’t there would want to see. What is it like to be in Paris while the Olympics are going on? What’s the food like? What’s the atmosphere? What are people talking about? What’s on the mind of the Olympians? Every day is going to be fun and exciting, and I’m ready to make videos and content that resonates with people.

What’s one must-have interview or piece of Olympic content you want to create?

If I could talk to [gymnast] Simone Biles or [swimmer] Katie Ledecky, sign me up! But they are obviously in high demand. I’m just really excited to see the venues and show our audience how integrated they are into the city. Beach volleyball is being played underneath the Eiffel Tower. Marathon runners are literally running through the city. Equestrian is happening at the Château de Versailles. There’s so many different, fascinating utilizations of this space and I just want to do it all.

What is the most valuable lesson you learned from your time on campus?

News judgment. News judgment is very hard to come by, recognizing what deserves the spotlight. Those skills have been essential every day of my career and it all comes back to the years of training we had at Syracuse University and in the Newhouse School. The class activities where you identify the lead of a particular situation. Working as an editor for The Daily Orange, I was coming up with stories all the time. All that practice became muscle memory and now it’s part of my toolkit. Had I not spent all that time learning what a lead should look like and what is the most important news story of the day, I wouldn’t have that strong news judgment I have today.

Mike Tirico ’88, NBC’s voice of the Olympics, talks about getting ready for the games, his commitment to helping our young broadcast students and his love for Syracuse University.

When the Olympic Games begin later this month, one of the University’s best-known alums will be front and center. In many ways it’s a role Mike Tirico ’88 knew he wanted at an early age.

“My mom will tell you, even as a little kid, I was walking around pretending to be a sportscaster,” he says. “This is what I wanted to do in life.”

As the athletes prepare for competition, Tirico is preparing to anchor NBC’s daily Olympics coverage as he’s done since 2016. But as most broadcast fans know, Olympics studio host is only part of the Tirico portfolio, which includes “Sunday Night Football,” PGA golf, and thoroughbred and Indy racing among others. Those sports he knows well. This summer he’ll be put to the test with new Olympic sports, all while trying to avoid making waves.

“Surfing is happening in Tahiti at the Olympics, I put up my hand to volunteer to be the surfing correspondent,” says Tirico, who adds with a smile that “for some reason, they went with Colin Jost from ‘Saturday Night Live.’ I don’t know what I should read into that but it’s fine.”

Break dancing is another sport new to the games and according to Tirico a sign of the athletic times. “It does speak to what the Olympics does in trying to reach out to new generations and keep the youth of the world involved,” he says. “There was a time that snowboarding came in the Olympics and people were asking why. Now, snowboarding is one of the cornerstones of the Winter Olympics.”

In this “’Cuse Conversations” podcast, Tirico talks about getting ready for the games, his sleep schedule while in Paris (it’s rough), his commitment to helping our young broadcast students and, as a first-generation student who met and married his wife here, his love for Syracuse University.

Check out podcast featuring Tirico. A transcript [PDF]��is also available.

What are your most memorable moments from the Games?

This would be the fifth Olympic Games I cover, the fourth as the primetime host and watching Americans win gold medals in person, those stick out for me. When we say the Olympics brings the world together, I don’t mean to be too Pollyanna about it because the Olympics are flawed in many ways, they are impacted by politics and corruption and all this stuff that’s happened, those stories have been well reported for years. But just the fact that there’s somebody in South Sudan who is training the same way somebody is training in South San Francisco for the same event and they get to meet in the middle and figure out who’s better, that’s still really freaking cool for me.

With 30 different Olympic sports and more than 10,000 athletes, and knowing your busy sports coverage schedule, how do you find the time to prepare?

Mike Tirico

If I’ve learned anything, it’s you can’t be prepared for everything at the Olympics. The key is to know how to access it and, oftentimes, that is our research team. The unheralded heroes of Olympic coverage for generations have been and continue to be the research teams who work year-round on the details of the competition.

In the lead up to it, it’s go over all the stuff so you know where it is but don’t memorize it because you can’t. You can’t know everything about each of the 10,000-plus athletes or every sport, all the 200-plus countries or delegations that will come down the river, in this case, the opening ceremony in France.

So, it is learn how to prepare for it and really focus in on the stuff we cover the most—swimming, ��gymnastics, track and field, basketball, volleyball, beach volleyball, women’s soccer, men’s soccer. Know that and then know the big athletes, the 50 or so that will become somewhat familiar names to households around America.

In many ways you are not starting from scratch here, are you?

You’re not starting from zero, you’re starting from, “Okay, I remember this in Tokyo and let’s just build on that.” And I think, during the years now as well, maybe I wouldn’t have been paying attention to the world swimming championships that were on, but now that I know this is my job and I’m getting ready for this Olympics, which gets you ready for the next one, you pay more attention. The global athletes, international athletes are on my radar way before I open up a book and say, “Okay, today is swimming day, let’s start cramming for swimming.” It helps significantly to have some gray hair in the chair.

Mike, you and I have been friends for many years, having worked together at WTVH in Syracuse. If we could go back, what would you say to young Mike, the sportscaster at TV5?

I wish I could tell younger Mike to have a little broader view and be adventurous more. I think being adventurous as a journalist is impactful and I think, over time, we start to feel that a bit more. I think you know you’ve done the job, you’ve established yourself. It’s so hard to fake confidence but that’s what you have to do at an early age. I’m 21, 22, here I am trying to ask Jim Boeheim a question. Jim Boeheim, at that point, knew a thousand times more about basketball than I did and I’m trying to ask an impactful question and make a difference and I wish I would’ve had a little more ability to fake my confidence and get through that stuff back then. And that, if you’re prepared, you’re going to be all right and you don’t have to doubt yourself.

Note: This conversation was edited for brevity and clarity.

Students in Brad Horn’s Managing Global Brands of Sport: An International Public Relations Study class learned about global sport through the communication lens during a three-week immersion experience in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Historically, the Olympics have provided countless memorable athletic achievements—the Miracle on Ice men’s hockey team upsetting the Soviet Union at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York; the Dream Team capturing gold at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain; gymnast Kerri Strug shrugging off an ankle injury to lead Team USA to its first-ever team gold medal at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia, just to name a few.

And while there are sure to be impressive performances when the world’s best athletes converge in Paris, France, for the upcoming Summer Olympics, the Games are also an opportunity to showcase the global power of sport, which is the focal point of recently concluded Managing Global Brands of Sport: An International Public Relations Study class, held for three weeks in Lausanne, Switzerland, as part of an immersion experience for students.

Brad Horn

“We focus on how to bridge the gap between what Americans know about sports in our country compared to global sport through communications,” says Horn, associate dean for strategic initiatives and professor of practice in public relations in the .

“Look ahead to what the U.S. is going to see in sport. We’re hosting the 2026 World Cup, the 2028 Summer Olympics are being held in Los Angeles and the 2034 Winter Olympics potentially will be hosted in Lake Placid. This is a decade where those working in U.S. sports will be working with and dealing with global sport entities like never before, and there’s a big knowledge gap. I want to do my part to help prepare students to better understand that landscape.”

Horn’s professional background in communications and public relations includes working for more than 20 years in Major League Baseball (MLB) and with the Baseball Hall of Fame, serving as an ambassador at the World Series, the World Baseball Classic, the All-Star game and MLB International before heading up communication and education for the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency.

“This idea of global sport has always been part of my DNA,” says Horn, who sat down with SU News to discuss the objectives of his class, the important takeaways and how his students leave with a broadened understanding of the global power of sport.

Describe the goals and important takeaways of the class.

Students pose on the floor of the Union Cycliste Internationale’s headquarters in Aigle, Switzerland.

This is an immersion into global sport through the communication lens. We look at how organizations communicate through their sport or their sport’s governing body about cultural and geopolitical issues with stakeholders around the globe. The idea is to give students various perspectives from organizations like the International Olympic Committee, FIFA, the International Testing Agency, anti-doping agencies, FIBA, the World Baseball Softball Confederation, the Union Cycliste Internationale and more. These were some of the bigger organizations we visited this year.

Our students also work a two-day Hosts and Federations Summit, where 300 delegates came to Lausanne to pitch their cities on major sporting events, to pitch their sport to match with a city or to pitch their rights to sell these sporting events. It gives students a chance to look at sport in an entirely different way than what we think about in the U.S., which is so focused on the four major sports [football, basketball, baseball and hockey] and on college sports. They get to study how global sport governance works and how communication is developed at a central office. It’s an immersion that gives them a front row seat into global sport communication.

How did you incorporate the upcoming Summer Olympics into your class?

We’re trying to understand the origins of sport in places like Greece, Switzerland, China and Australia. The origins are not in the four major sports in America, which are so young compared to the historical lens of the Olympiad. We look at the lessons we’ve learned during the modern Olympics by bringing people together across cultures. We look at moments like the 1936 Summer Olympics in Germany, when Adolf Hitler used the Olympics as his propaganda and Jesse Owens, the great Black American track and field athlete, refused to interact with Hitler and his racist agenda while winning four gold medals.

We spend time trying to understand the idea of Olympism, a philosophy that emphasizes the wholeness of body, will and mind, combining sport with culture and education. We examine how the media prepares for the Games, the questions the press could be asking the host country and how people are representing their nations from a media standpoint.

We then look at how the Olympics create this idea that sport unites us during a time when the world is so polarized. As communicators, there are two questions we always want to answer in public relations: Who are we trying to reach and what are we trying to get them to do? In sport, we’re not just trying to get a box score out there and hope fans see it. We’re trying to think deeply about passion and fan engagement and how we can unlock this fandom.

Influenced primarily by an American viewpoint on sports, what are some of the reactions students have when they come over for this immersion experience?

These students realize that the U.S. is not the center of the sports world. We went to the Centre for Sport and Human Rights to help students understand that not everything that glitters is gold when it comes to sport. There are human rights atrocities and violations of athletes’ rights. There are violations of worker rights when stadiums are being built for competitions. Migrant workers died building stadiums for the World Cup in Qatar.

These issues are all becoming bigger with each passing day. I feel very passionate about this immersion experience because it truly gives students a sense that sport is a lot more than just the NBA Finals, the Super Bowl or seeing a great Aaron Judge home run. Globally, sports are tied into societies and into national pride, and communicating across those cultures is really challenging.

The work is the result of comprehensive research through the ElectionGraph project from the University’s ��(IDJC). In conjunction with the , IDJC ElectionGraph researchers released a report that found about 2,200 webpages have run ads on Facebook and Instagram between Sept. 1, 2023, and April 30, 2024.

The ads, which mentioned President Joe Biden, former President Donald Trump or other presidential primary candidates, have collectively exceeded 1 billion impressions.

Jennifer Stromer-Galley

Though a majority of the pages analyzed appear tied to legitimate groups, a portion of the pages appear to be “inauthentic influencers” who are secretly coordinating and running identical videos or messages. Several of these groups include false or misleading information in their ads, the report found.

The research also captured evidence of a deepfake featuring manipulated audio of figures, including Trump and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. And the findings detailed different political issues on which conservative and progressive-leaning pages are focusing their ad spends.

For conservative pages, immigration has been the top issue, surpassing the economy, while the economy was the top issue for progressive pages. Accounting for all pages regardless of leaning, ads related to the economy received the most ad dollars.

This is the second , which seeks to identify misinformation trends in the U.S. presidential election and other top 2024 contests.��The project is supported by a grant and use of analytics software from , the world’s leading graph database and analytics company.

The Institute for Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship is a joint University initiative of the Newhouse School of Public Communications and Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.

The IDJC ElectionGraph team’s efforts included pinpointing origins of messages and tracing misinformation by collecting and algorithmically classifying ads run on Facebook and Instagram, as well as social media posts on Facebook and X, formerly known as Twitter.

Johanna Dunaway

The network of authentic and inauthentic actors identified in the research represents just a fraction of all coordinated pages related to elections. Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, is the only social media group that grants approved organizations access to ad data. This data is not required to be disclosed and is not similarly trackable on TikTok, Google, YouTube or Snapchat, according to the report.

“What this research reveals is the surprising number of actors we know very little about who are spending money targeting voters with messaging on social media where there is little transparency,” says Jennifer Stromer-Galley, professor in the School of Information Studies and lead researcher for the project.

“It underscores that tech platforms need to do more to allow academics and journalists access to platform data so that political actors can be held to account with the American public,” Stromer-Galley says.

Johanna Dunaway, IDJC research director and a professor of political science in the Maxwell School, says that what stands out from the analysis is the reminder that the election information environment is more confusing than ever.

“Even as some things stay the same—like emphasis on the economy and more focus on advocacy and attacks than issues—opaque messaging from��random one-off groups or complex hidden networks with��questionable motives��makes it��increasingly difficult to identify credible messages and sources in��the��cacophony��of campaign-related��information,” Dunaway says.

Margaret Talev

The prevalence of inauthentic groups, scams and deepfake voices just within the parameters of the search shows a massive amount of manipulation and misinformation targeting Americans through the political information consumed online, says Margaret Talev, Kramer Director of the IDJC, professor of practice in the Newhouse School and a journalist.

“This is a situation of ‘voter beware’ but also ‘consumer beware’ because sometimes what looks like a bid for your vote may actually be a bid for your identity or your credit card information,” Talev says.

Jim Webber, Neo4j’s chief scientist, says that covert operations by coordinated networks in digital civic spaces is a dangerous modern reality—while the company’s graph technology is enabling IDJC’s researchers “to uncover the hidden patterns and actions of those covert actors” and identify misinformation and misleading content.

Michael O. Sawyer

While many have helped to shape the Maxwell School’s first 100 years, perhaps no one person embodies the spirit, mission and purpose of the school as thoroughly as beloved alumnus and professor Michael O. Sawyer.

Sawyer spent almost his entire educational career at Maxwell—as student, faculty member and administrator—earning three degrees and retiring in 1990 after 42 years on the faculty.

A torchbearer across generations, Sawyer studied with esteemed faculty like Marguerite J. Fisher, Spencer D. Parratt and Roy Price, before helping to establish and nurture some of the school’s signature traditions.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in social science, then master’s and doctoral degrees in political science while serving as an instructor in the social science Ph.D. program. Among his students was late Professor Emeritus Ralph Ketcham, whom Sawyer helped to pioneer the school’s interdisciplinary, team-taught approach to citizenship education.

“I’ve known Mike ever since I came here for graduate school in 1951,” Ketcham said of Sawyer upon his passing in 2002. “He was so serious and wise about the craft of teaching, I worked with him on many courses. Having him involved raised both the quality of the course and the number of students who wanted to take it; his student following was the greatest of anyone I know.”

Sawyer became an instructor at Maxwell in 1948 and was promoted through the ranks to professor. He touched thousands of undergraduate students through a required first-year course on citizenship and an upper-level course in constitutional law, which he taught until his retirement.

He served for a time as director of the program in public affairs and citizenship; and in the 1980s, he served as vice chancellor to Chancellor Melvin Eggers. In 1986, students voted him the Outstanding Professor of Syracuse University—the same year he received Syracuse University’s highest alumni honor, the George Arents Pioneer Medal.

“He was a teacher both in and out of the classroom and to students and colleagues alike,” says Dean Emeritus and University Professor John Palmer, who was dean of Maxwell at the time of Sawyer’s retirement in 1990. “Teaching was his enduring love, and in turn the primary source of the love and respect he has earned from all who have been fortunate to come into contact with him during his career here.”

Among the qualities that made him so popular were Sawyer’s intellect, caring and wit, which often accompanied some good-natured chiding.

“He had a jukebox in his office on the ground floor of Maxwell, and when students would come asking for an extension or give some excuse, he’d play ‘Cry Me a River,’” recalls friend and former student William “Bill” Brodsky ’65, L’68, H’24, an accomplished investment industries executive who chairs the Investment Committee of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation and who serves on the University’s Investment and Endowment Committee as a life trustee. “He believed that every person is special and should be heard,” says Brodsky. “He could always see the other side. Sometimes when I see what is going on in politics today, I wish I could say, ‘Michael, what do you think about this?’ He was always so optimistic.”

In 1988, Brodsky and his wife, Joan ’67, G’68, H’24, spearheaded the campaign to establish the Michael O. Sawyer Chair of Constitutional Law and Politics. The chair is currently held by Thomas Keck, professor of political science.

“It used to be that almost every time I gave a public talk in Central New York, someone from the audience would approach me afterwards and introduce themselves as a former student of Sawyer’s,” says Keck. “They would invariably tell me what a transformative and inspirational impact he had on them as young adults, and it’s that legacy that I try to live up to in my own teaching.”

Story by Jessica Smith

Marguerite J. Fisher

Marguerite J. Fisher G’42�� joined the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs faculty in August 1943, as war raged across the globe.

While the war necessitated women’s entry into the workforce, roles remained limited. Fisher, the first female promoted to associate professor then full professor at Maxwell, was a trailblazer—and a fierce one at that. She traveled extensively, studied women’s rights around the world and shared unflinching assessments, including her 1962 observation that, “Russians use the brains of women more than we do in America.”

Students who were late to her class had to enter through the window.

By the time Robert McClure arrived a quarter-century later, she had become a larger-than-life figure.

“I first met her when she was a tenured grande dame of the faculty, and I was a junior nobody. I didn’t want to cross her. She was an indomitable presence,” says McClure, professor emeritus of political science and public affairs and former senior associate dean of the Maxwell School. “I grew to have great respect for her. She had a strong student following that reveled in her stories and quirkiness.

She had been everywhere, and she knew everyone.”

Fisher graduated cum laude from Smith College in 1926. She received a master’s degree from Columbia University in 1927 and a Ph.D. in political science from Maxwell in 1942.

Her academic work on international issues was extensive and sometimes controversial. In 1952, at the height of the McCarthy era, she published “Communist Doctrine and the Free World,” though colleagues urged her to delay publication. She was also outspoken in her opposition to the Vietnam War and published studies of women’s rights around the world.

Fisher encouraged her students to engage in civic life. For one of her graduate courses, she had students perform 12 hours of political party work or service to civic groups. She took her own advice, serving as president of the Onondaga County League of Women Voters and the Syracuse Federation of Business and Professional Women. “If women are to play more than a passive role…they must be part of the machinery which determines the candidates and the issues, namely, the two major political party organizations,” she wrote in 1947 in an article for The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

Carol Faulkner, professor of history and senior associate dean for academic affairs, sees this intentional engagement as part of Fisher’s legacy. “When I came to the dean’s office, the first thing the dean did was give me a picture of Marguerite Fisher,” she says. “Even though, historically, it has sometimes seemed like a very male space, it is welcoming to women and welcoming to people from around the world.”

Kristi Andersen, professor emeritus of political science, also found respect at Maxwell. When she arrived for her interview in 1984, Thomas Patterson, the political science chair at the time, had his infant child in the office while his wife worked. “He was ahead of the time, so that made me feel good about the department,” Andersen says. She regrets she never met Fisher, who had retired years earlier. “I remember hearing about her from older colleagues—male colleagues—they all thought Maggie Fisher was a good teacher, a smart person and a real character,” she says.

McClure suggests her reputation was a product of her trailblazing life. “As the first tenured female on the faculty, she had to put up with a lot. She dealt with it by taking it head on and staring it down. She was a magnificent woman,” he says.

Fisher’s memorial service in 1990 in Hendricks Chapel was as unforgettable as she was. As speakers from all over the world told stories and a group of women danced the hula in her honor, McClure thought, “She went out as she came in, one of a kind.”

Story by Lenore Friend

Each wave of findings from the is based on interviews with roughly 1,000 U.S. adults conducted by Ipsos through its probability-based KnowledgePanel.

Initial findings released Thursday found that Republicans were more invested in watching the first presidential debate between President Biden and former President Trump than Democrats or independents.

Based on a survey conducted May 17-19, 75% of Republicans said they were likely to watch the debate, compared with 61% of Democrats and 58% of independents.

“This project will help IDJC researchers expand our understanding of media consumption and an increasingly polarized electorate in a rapidly changing news climate,” says , Kramer Director of the IDJC and professor of practice of magazine, news and digital journalism at the .

The is a joint University initiative of the Newhouse School and the . Based in Washington, D.C., the institute engages in nonpartisan research, teaching and public dialogue aimed at strengthening trust in news media, governance and society.

“While many polls are focused on the horse race, this gives us the opportunity to understand how this election cycle is shaping Americans’ perspectives about patriotism, partisanship and the importance of democracy,” says , IDJC research director and professor of political science at Maxwell.

, IDJC senior researcher, says “Our hope is that we can learn more about the relationships between identity, trust in media and attitudes toward democracy that shape the stakes of the election—not merely try to predict the election.” Darr also is an associate professor of communications at Newhouse.

The IDJC also offers foundational courses taught in the nation’s capital in civics, media literacy and ethics, and works with the Maxwell and Newhouse schools to facilitate internships, networking opportunities with alumni and other educational experiences for Syracuse University students.

The polling partnership with Ipsos will provide another avenue to teach students about survey research and demographic trends in society, Talev says.

“These are such important tools for aspiring journalists to have in their skillset,” she says. “It’s critical for reporters and writers to understand how voters feel and perceive developments on the trail to cover the campaign with proper context and authority.”

Talev also is a senior contributor at Axios and Thursday.

A long, distinguished career has taken Army Colonel Pia W. Rogers L’01, G’01 to assignments around the globe and led to her current position at the Pentagon.

Pia W. Rogers

On Friday, June 28, she we will return to where her professional journey began, Syracuse University, to give the keynote address at the 2024 master of public administration convocation ceremony, as the school celebrates its 100th anniversary.

Rogers plans to talk about her path in the 22 years since earning a Maxwell M.P.A., as well as her commitment to public service and her advice for graduates. “Today my energy is derived from those around me—subordinates, peers and superiors—and how we, collectively, improve our foxhole,” she says.

After being commissioned at Syracuse University through the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) program and earning her undergraduate degree in journalism from the Newhouse School of Public Communications in 1998, Rogers went on to complete the J.D./M.P.A. dual-degree program in 2001.

She joined the Army’s Judge Advocate General’s Corps in 2002 and has been an active-duty soldier for 22 years. During that time, she has been stationed at numerous locations across the globe, including Taegu, South Korea; Kabul, Afghanistan; and Bolslawiac, Poland. In the U.S., she has worked in Maryland, Virginia, Kansas, North Carolina, Colorado and now, at the Pentagon, where she serves as the chief of legislation, investigations and nominations for the Office of the Chief Legislative Liaison, U.S. Army.

Maxwell’s M.P.A. program was the first program of its kind in the nation and was one of the original educational offerings of the Maxwell School when it opened in Slocum Hall on Oct. 3, 1924, thanks to the vision and support of George Holmes Maxwell. The yearlong program runs from July to June and has consistently been ranked No. 1 by peers surveyed for U.S. News & World Report. It blends theory and practice to prepare service-oriented leaders for careers in a wide-range of fields in the public and private sectors.

The convocation ceremony begins at 10 a.m. in Hendricks Chapel with welcoming remarks by Patrick Edwards G’24 M.P.A. and a graduating student address by Omer Keles G’24.

At the conclusion of the keynote and student addresses, the Brady K. Howell Maxwell Alumni Award will be presented to Judith Douglas ’77, G’81. Douglas is the industry chair of the Collaboration Council for the American Council for Technology, Industry Advisory Council Executive Committee.

Douglas’ public service leadership spans federal, state and local levels of government, as well as nonprofit organizations, academia and private industry. She is being honored for her innovative and collaborative contributions across industries and her ongoing involvement as an alumna.

The year 2025 marks the 35th anniversary of the ADA, celebrated on July 26. During the past three decades, disability law and policy have evolved dramatically in the United States and internationally. “Walls of inaccessibility, exclusion, segregation and discrimination have been torn down, often brick by brick. But the work continues, many times led by advocates who have never known a world without the ADA and are now building on the efforts of those who came before them,” says Blanck, who is also a professor in the College of Law.

Lex Frieden, an internationally distinguished disability rights scholar and advocate and former Chairperson of the U.S. National Council on Disability, writes in the Foreword to Blanck’s book: “In 1967, I survived a head-on car crash. When I woke up, I was paralyzed from the shoulders down. . . . My story is one of many in the modern disability rights movement. In ‘Disability Law and Policy,’ Peter Blanck retells my story, and the personal experiences of many others living with disabilities, in a master tour of the area. Peter is a world-renowned teacher, researcher, lawyer, and advocate. He has been central to the modern sea change in disability civil rights . . . ‘Disability Law and Policy’ should be read by all of us—people with the lived experience of disability and their advocates, parents, family members and friends.”

Blanck says that “a new generation of people with disabilities, building on the efforts of Lex Frieden and many others, families, friends, advocates,and supporters, is stepping forward. As a guiding beacon, disability law and policy offer hope of a future in which all people, regardless of individual difference, will be welcomed as full and equal members of society.”

“Disability Law and Policy” is published by Foundation Press and is available from .

Terence J. Lau

Syracuse University today announced that Terence J. Lau L’98 has been named the 13th dean of Syracuse University’s College of Law. The appointment, which begins Aug. 5, was approved by the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees.

“We are excited to welcome Terence Lau back to Syracuse University,” says Vice Chancellor, Provost and Chief Academic Officer Gretchen Ritter. “His distinguished record and depth of experience as a lawyer and a higher education leader make him an outstanding choice to be the next dean to lead the College of Law.”

Lau, a College of Law alumnus, brings extensive legal and higher education experience to the position. He comes to Syracuse from California State University, Chico, where he is a professor of management. He has held numerous leadership positions at the university, including as dean of the College of Business (2018-2023), where he oversaw nearly 70 faculty and 3,000 undergraduate and graduate students. In that role, Lau shepherded the launch of new online M.B.A. and B.S.B.A. programs, managed successful reaccreditation and led fundraising for a new building. Lau also served as interim dean of the College of Engineering, Computer Science and Construction Management (January 2023-July 2023) and interim provost and vice president for academic affairs (July 2023-February 2024).

Previously, Lau was the associate dean for undergraduate programs and a professor of business law at the University of Dayton’s School of Business Administration.

“I’m thrilled to be returning to Syracuse where I received a legal education that transformed my professional life,” Lau says. “Syracuse Law launched me to a level of success I didn’t even dream was possible. The college’s unique programs, including the hands-on clinics and first-in-the-nation JDi program, as well as top-ranked trial advocacy programs, are already distinctive and impactful programs. I look forward to working with the faculty, staff, students, alumni and benefactors, and members of the legal community, to advance the college’s reputation and provide our students with an exceptional legal education.”

Prior to his time in higher education, Lau held leadership roles in government affairs and law. From 2000 to 2002, he served as director of ASEAN Governmental Affairs for Ford Asia Pacific Operations in Bangkok, where he represented Ford’s government affairs with company affiliates, industry organizations and the governments of 10 countries affiliated with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.��Prior to that, he was an attorney in the International Practice Group for the Ford Motor Company.��Lau served as a Judicial Fellow at the U.S. Supreme Court, working for the counselor to the chief justice of the United States, from 2006 to 2007.

Lau has published numerous articles on the legal environment of business and is a former editor-in-chief of the American Business Law Journal.��He is co-author of “The Legal and Ethical Environment of Business,” published by Flat World Knowledge and now in its fifth edition.

The dean search committee, convened by Ritter in December, was co-chaired by , professor of law and director of advocacy programs, and , David M. Levy L’48 Professor of Law.

“I greatly appreciate the hard work that Nina, Todd and the committee members put into recruiting such a talented leader for the College of Law,” Provost Ritter says.

Lau succeeds , who concludes his tenure as dean this month after eight years in the position. Under his leadership, the College of Law has seen the launch of innovative new programs, the establishment of professional partnerships and a growth in research.

“Craig has been a transformative leader for the College of Law, creating a strong foundation on which future success will be built. I thank him for his service to the college and the University,” Provost Ritter says.

A LCVP (Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel) from the U.S. Coast Guard-manned USS Samuel Chase disembarks troops of the U.S. Army’s First Division on the morning of June 6, 1944, (D-Day) at Omaha Beach, France. (Photo by Chief Photographer’s Mate (CPHOM) Robert F. Sargent, U.S. Coast Guard)

Eighty years ago this week the epic invasion of Allied air and ground forces swept across the Normandy peninsula to help defeat Adolf Hitler and his German war machine during World War II.

A battle of more than 150,000 Allied troops, who fought on the beaches and in the hedgerows, D-Day launched June 6, 1944, and remains immortalized in books, movies and television shows—and in the sacred cemeteries on the French coast.

Alan Allport

For all its magnitude, the battle didn’t decide the outcome of the war, as German forces were already weakening in the face of the Soviet army on the Eastern Front, says Professor Alan Allport, the Dr. Walter Montgomery and Marian Gruber Professor of History in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.

However, D-Day and its strategic importance finally gained Allied forces their footing in Europe and had long-lasting implications for a Western Europe free from communism and enduring American international diplomacy, says Allport, who is the author of “Britain at Bay: The Epic Story of the Second World War 1938-1941” (Knopf, North America).

In this Q&A with SU News, Allport further explains the significance of D-Day and its impact generations later. For any media who wish to schedule an interview with Allport, please reach out to Vanessa Marquette, media relations specialist, at vrmarque@syr.edu.

The College of Law will host the National Military Trial Competition and the Syracuse Deposition Competition in the 2024-2025 academic year.

The College of Law will host two first-of-its-kind intercollegiate trial advocacy competitions in the 2024-2025 academic year. The new competitions are the National Military Trial Competition and the Syracuse Deposition Competition, bringing the total of hosted Syracuse Law competitions to five.

The National Military Trial Competition (NMTC) introduces law students with an interest in military justice and the Judge Advocate General’s Corps (JAG) to the trial process in military courts. The competition will take place in person in Syracuse March 21-23, 2025.

NMTC will feature between eight to 12 teams competing against each other in a case involving a military court-martial. The case will be tried using the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and the Rules for Courts-Martial (RCM) applicable to military courts.

Because trying cases in a military court may be unfamiliar to students and coaches, the College of Law will facilitate a virtual non-mandatory introductory training for trying cases in military courts, immediately before the release of the fact pattern. While teams can choose their coach, the College of Law will connect any team who are interested in working with current or former JAG officers with JAG officers who are willing to coach and assist.

The Syracuse Deposition Competition (SDC) fills a training void in legal academia by providing students with a unique platform to expand their arsenal of practical skills. Participants will gain invaluable insight through simulated real-world experience to enhance critical skills for conducting and defending depositions. The competition will take place virtually Nov. 1-3, 2024.

Today, depositions have become the standard and trials the exception. A forum to develop deposition skills is more necessary now than ever. Between the 1930s and 1960s, the percentage of federal civil cases that went to trial fell from 20% to 12%. By 1992, this number dropped to 3.5%.

The competition will feature a minimum of eight teams who will compete by taking and defending depositions. Because of the unique nature of a new deposition competition, the College of Law will host a non-mandatory virtual training session to discuss the basics of deposition practice immediately before the release of the fact pattern.

“The new competitions close a gap in legal advocacy education as these are the first to address the unique challenges of military law and trials and the burgeoning reliance on depositions rather than trials to settle disputes,” says Professor Todd Berger, director of advocacy programs in the College of Law.

The college also hosts the National Trial League, the Syracuse National Trial Competition and the Transatlantic Negotiations Competition (co-hosted with Queen’s University Belfast). Information on all College of Law-hosted trial advocacy competitions can be found on its .

“Syracuse University College of Law has a track record of creating innovative advocacy curriculum and programs that further the practical educational needs of today’s law students,” says Dean Craig Boise. “I am proud that our institution is adding these unique competitions that will help train new lawyers with the skills needed in the legal profession.”

In addition to the five hosted intercollegiate competitions, the College of Law offers the only joint J.D./LL.M. in advocacy and litigation degree that students can complete in three years and at no further cost than the J.D. Its Travis H.D. Lewin Advocacy Honor Society conducts five intracollegiate competitions and participates in numerous intercollegiate competitions across the country.

Photos by Chuck Wainwright

On Friday, May 3, the College of Law held its Commencement exercises for the Class of 2024, which included 208 recipients of the juris doctor (J.D.) degree, 26 master of law graduates (LL.M.) and one doctor of juridical science degree (S.J.D.).

Commencement Speaker the Hon. James E. Graves Jr. G’80, L’80, U.S. Circuit Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit

Class of 2024 Commencement Speaker the Hon. James E. Graves Jr. G’80, L’80, U.S. Circuit Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, said, in part, “Begin each day expecting that the world owes you nothing, because it doesn’t, and then you will be delighted with every kind word, every helping hand and every little smile, which is given to you during the day. Remember that as you go through life, you will inevitably encounter and interact with people. You’re making memories for those people. Make those memories, those moments, positive.”

Dean Craig M. Boise addresses the students and their families.

Dean Craig M. Boise said to the class, “In a world that is increasingly characterized by division, injustice and inequality, the need for principled, compassionate and courageous advocates has never been greater. You are the future leaders of the legal profession, and the challenges that lie ahead will require vision, integrity and a steadfast commitment to justice. Let your actions speak louder than words and let your commitment to justice be a beacon of hope in a world that is often filled with darkness.”

Teaching Professor and Associate Dean of Academic and Bar Success Kelly Curtis receiving the Res Ipsa Loquitor Award.

During Commencement, the J.D. Class of 2024 awarded Teaching Professor and Associate Dean of Academic and Bar Success Kelly Curtis the Res Ipsa Loquitor Award (voted upon by the graduating class in recognition of a faculty member who has demonstrated exceptional commitment and service to the College of Law) and Assistant Director of Student Experience Vicki Donella the Staff Award (voted upon by the graduating class in recognition of a College of Law staff member in recognition of their support of students and faculty, and their accomplishments that make the college run day-to-day).

The LL.M. Class of 2024 awarded Associate Professor of Law Jenny Breen the Lucet Lex Mundum Award (voted upon by the graduating LL.M. class, it recognizes the professor who has made a significant impact on the success and experiences of LL.M. students during their studies).

Research from the project found that the millions paid for more than 24,000 ad buys and about 5,500 unique ads on Facebook and Instagram between Sept. 1, 2023, and Feb. 29, 2024. This amounts to an estimated 869 million impressions in the months leading up to, and during, the presidential primaries. The majority of ads involved Biden or Trump, the report found.����

The Biden and Trump campaigns spent another roughly $10 million on paid social media content, drawing 303 million impressions, though the incumbent outspent Trump about 7-to-1 on these platforms.����

This is the produced via by a $250,000 grant from , the world’s leading graph database and analytics company. The grant allows ElectionGraph researchers to use Neo4j’s graph database and analytics software to identify misinformation trends in the U.S. presidential election and other top 2024 contests.��

The research team’s efforts focus on dissecting misinformation themes—pinpointing origins of messages and tracing misinformation by collecting and algorithmically classifying ads run on Facebook and Instagram, as well as social media posts on Facebook and X, formerly known as Twitter. The project will also gather input from journalists and the public about the 2024 presidential election, and races for U.S. Senate and key congressional districts.��

The first set of findings released today demonstrate the importance of requiring social media platforms to disclose details about election advertising and messaging, says Jennifer Stromer-Galley, senior associate dean and professor at the School of Information Studies. An expert in political campaigns and misinformation, Stromer-Galley leads the IDJC ElectionGraph research team. ��

“Revealing details about ads and messaging on social media platforms is vital to provide the public with transparency and context,” Stromer-Galley says. “Failure to do so can make voters more vulnerable to manipulation without any sort of accountability.”��

Organizations that ran ads ranged from well-known political action committees, political party groups or other candidates, to obscure players with harder-to-trace ties and agendas, the report found. The analysis identifies the top 30 spenders that each mention Biden and Trump, and examines patterns in how groups apply the honorific of “President” when referring to either candidate.��

The report captures a fraction of overall U.S. election-related content across all social media platforms. While Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, currently allows approved organizations to access ad data, it is not required to be made available—and not similarly trackable—on TikTok, Google, YouTube or Snapchat.��

“These findings give us a glimpse at the firehose of information and misinformation coming at voters from groups with a jumble of motives, ties and trustworthiness ahead of the 2024 elections,” says Margaret Talev, Kramer Director of the IDJC, professor of practice at the Newhouse School of Public Communications and a journalist.

The challenge faced by digital researchers and computational journalists in unearthing the consequences of AI-driven misinformation on democracy is enormous, says Jim Webber, chief scientist at Neo4j. ��

“Graph technology is an essential enabler to those seeking to uncover hidden patterns and networks of those looking to manipulate democratic populations,” Webber says.

“We at Neo4j are proud to support Syracuse University’s mission to help journalists and citizens separate fact from fake news so that the voting public can make informed decisions as they go to the polls.”��

Syracuse University alumni and staff with representatives from the New York State Legislature. (Photo courtesy of New York State Senate)

The New York State Legislature honored the history and legacy of the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs with the passage of a resolution celebrating the school’s 100th anniversary. The resolution was sponsored in the Senate by Sen. Rachel May and in the Assembly by Assemblymembers William Magnarelli ’70, L’73, Pamela Hunter and Albert Stirpe.

Senate Resolution No. 1717/Assembly Resolution No. 2004 reads: “The Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs is proudly aware of its distinguished past, eager to fulfill its present commitment to parents, students and the community, and planning with vision and purpose for the ebb and swell of growth and change it will encounter in the years to come; now, therefore, be it resolved, that this Legislative Body pause in its deliberations to commemorate the 100th Anniversary of Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.”

David M. Van Slyke, dean of the Maxwell School, traveled to Albany with several school representatives to receive the resolution and to be recognized from the floor of the New York State Senate and Assembly.

At the presentation of the resolution were, from left, Maxwell Assistant Dean for Advancement Elizabeth Armstrong, Asm. William Magnarelli, Dean David M. Van Slyke, Asm. Pamela Hunter, Director of Accelerated Learning and Global Engagement Dan Nelson, and Asm. Albert Stirpe.

“It was a true privilege to be recognized in the New York State Senate and Assembly chambers for the work the Maxwell School has accomplished over the last century,” Van Slyke says. “The New York State Legislature, and New York State government in general, are one of the many places where our students go in great numbers after graduation to start long and impactful careers in public service. To visit with so many alumni in chambers and in the capital was a pleasure.”

Founded in 1924 by George Holmes Maxwell, whose vision it was to establish a “School of American Citizenship,” the Maxwell School today is the top-ranked school for public affairs, according U.S. News & World Report’s rankings, offering graduate and professional programs in public administration and international affairs, and undergraduate and graduate degrees across the social sciences, including signature interdisciplinary undergraduate programs in policy, civic engagement, environmental sustainability and international relations. It is also home to 15 interdisciplinary research centers focused on topical areas within public affairs.

Assistant Dean for Advancement Elizabeth Armstrong and Director of Accelerated Learning and Global Engagement Dan Nelson joined Van Slyke in receiving the recognition before the Senate and Assembly. The delegation also met with Maxwell alumni in the capitol and at a reception follow the legislative honors.

Maxwell School alumni currently in the Legislature include Sen. Toby Ann Stavisky ’60, Assemblymembers Magnarelli, Nily Rozic ’22 and John Lemondes G’97, G’01. Hundreds more alumni work in the state Legislature and across all levels of state government, as well as in the capital region.

Boris Sanchez

Boris Sanchez ’09, an award-winning journalist and nationally recognized cable news anchor, will deliver the alumni keynote address at the 2024 College of Arts and Sciences (A&S) | Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs Undergraduate Convocation at 8:30 a.m. on Saturday, May 11. The celebration will be held in the JMA Wireless Dome.

A dual international relations and broadcast journalism graduate with over a decade of experience, Sanchez has co-anchored “CNN News Central” since April 2023. In that role, he has helped lead CNN’s coverage of major events, including former President Donald Trump’s legal issues, the OceanGate Titan submarine tragedy, conflicts in Palestine and Ukraine, and Supreme Court decisions on affirmative action and LGBTQ rights. He has also interviewed U.S. political officials about Trump’s ballot eligibility and electing a new speaker of the House.

Sanchez says it’s a “momentous honor” to have been asked to give remarks to graduates at his alma mater, especially since it’s the Maxwell School’s 100th anniversary.

“Syracuse helped shape everything I have aimed to accomplish throughout my career, and I am deeply humbled and grateful,” he says. “I look forward to celebrating the next generation and this important milestone with a personal message about the American Dream and our shared responsibility to forge a future defined by truth.”

While serving as emcee for the Maxwell School’s Awards of Excellence celebration in Washington, D.C., in April 2023, Sanchez told the audience of alumni and friends that his family’s passion for justice and democracy inspired his journalism career. He emigrated from Cuba as a small child after his grandfather was sentenced to two decades in prison for his strong beliefs about democracy.

The same authoritarian dictatorship denied Sanchez’s mother’s dream of becoming a writer or news reporter—instead, her son said, she was sent to work in a tin can factory.

“While their dreams were deferred, I was fortunate to pursue an education and career specializing in what they were not allowed to do, and that is, speak truth to power,” said Sanchez at the event.

Sanchez says his career has provided a platform to speak for people that are underrepresented, and to defend democracy. “And that’s not something I take lightly,” he says.

Prior to joining “CNN News Central,” Sanchez co-anchored the CNN program “New Day Weekend.” Before that, he was a CNN White House correspondent and a CNN national correspondent in Miami and New York City, and covered the 2016 protests in Charlotte, North Carolina, for which CNN won an Edward R. Murrow Award.

Early in his career, Sanchez faced challenges and uncertainty. His first job was as a weekend anchor and reporter at a small station in Redding, California, which involved solo work, reporting on spot news, and observing local politics in town halls and community meetings.

After Redding, he anchored for FOX 31 in Denver, where he broke a series of stories on legalization of recreational marijuana use in Colorado. Sanchez’s work earned a 2015 Heartland Regional Emmy Award.

“We’re thrilled to welcome Boris Sanchez back to the Syracuse University campus to give remarks to members of the graduating class of 2024,” says Maxwell School Dean David M. Van Slyke. “His professional accomplishments from a small-town station to CNN, and his dedication to truth and democracy, are an inspiration to our newest alumni as they embark on careers across sectors and across the world.”

Story by Michael Kelly

A one-day symposium April 19, supported by the Central New York Humanities Corridor, will explore how philosopher Immanuel Kant’s 1795 essay “Toward Perpetual Peace” can help lay the foundation for lasting peace.

Philosopher Immanuel Kant’s 1795 essay “Toward Perpetual Peace” still holds significant relevance even now more than two centuries after it was first published. With ongoing wars across the globe, securing peace remains elusive.

An upcoming will explore how Kant’s principles can help lay the foundation for lasting peace. The symposium is supported by the , whose administrative home is based at the . The event, “” will be held Friday, April 19, at Cornell University, with a symposium and workshop on one of Kant’s most widely read essays, Zum ewigen Frieden (“Toward Perpetual Peace”).

The symposium, as part of the , is organized by , Dean’s Professor of the Humanities in the College of Arts and Sciences and a founder and co-director of the Perpetual Peace Project, and , director of the Institute for German Cultural Studies and associate professor in the Department of German Studies and Graduate Field of Comparative Literature at Cornell University.

The Perpetual Peace Project, an ongoing international forum on the concept of peace, began as an initiative of the Humanities Center in 2008.

Gregg Lambert

“The purpose of the project is to raise awareness and attention to the fact that war is not one regional issue,” Lambert says. “It is a global issue, and the number of wars only seems to increase each year.”

Open to the public, Friday’s symposium, which also is a celebration of Kant’s 300th birthday, will begin with three individual papers that examine different aspects of Kant’s treatise and its contemporary relevance.

“Kant’s popular essay was reviewed and cited as an inspiration by numerous thinkers from the start,” Gilgen says. “Anyone thinking about peace and what it means and implies had/has to take Kant’s profound remarks into account.”

The treatise served as an inspiration for the League of Nations, the first worldwide intergovernmental organization, founded in 1920, as well as its successor organization, the United Nations, in 1945.

“At the symposium, we hope to draw on a wide audience interested in Kant’s political philosophy as well as the theory and practice of peace—a topic that could not be more timely in light of the many ongoing conflicts in different parts of the world,” Gilgen says.

Peter Gilgen

The second half of the event is dedicated to a workshop on the Perpetual Peace Project.

Lambert, who is also founding director of the Syracuse University Humanities Center in the College of Arts and Sciences, and , associate professor in the School of Arts, Media and Engineering, Arizona State University, and co-director of the Perpetual Peace Project, will present the workshop, which will launch the Perpetual Peace Academy. The academy will feature a curriculum created by faculty from all over the world, contributing designs of courses that they would teach in a virtual setting.

“We are really trying to engage students on all campuses and other participants in talking about the Perpetual Peace Project, and then we’re going to inaugurate the Perpetual Peace Academy,” Lambert says. “The academy will be driven by international faculty who want to contribute their ideas from across the disciplines.”

Along with his presence at the symposium, Nocek also joined Lambert in Lambert’s undergraduate seminar, , Tuesday for a discussion with students, and other participants, about the Perpetual Peace Academy. Nocek’s time at the symposium and in the seminar is supported as part of Syracuse University’s Distinguished Visiting Collaborator (DVC) initiative of the CNY Humanities Corridor.

Adam Nocek

Vivian May, director of the SU Humanities Center and lead director of the CNY Humanities Corridor, says the scholar mini-residency bridges the Syracuse University campus with another corridor campus, a model that deepens collaborative networks.

“In conversation with Lambert, Gilgen, and a range of other interlocutors over the course of his visit,��, founding director of the Center for Philosophical Technologies at Arizona State University, will discuss the importance of philosopher Immanuel Kant’s yet-to-be-realized concept of ‘perpetual peace,’” May says. “I encourage everyone who can to engage with this year’s DVC events and activities, as they offer an important opportunity for us to step back, refuse broad acceptance of violence and devastation, and actively pursue planetary peace—a peace that centers climate justice and holistic thriving.”

Since its start in 2008, the Perpetual Peace Project, structured around Kant’s six preliminary articles, has gone through three phases, with the first at Syracuse University and the United Nations in New York. This first phase included a co-edited and re-issue of a new book publication of Kant’s “Perpetual Peace” and several different events.

In partnership with the Humanities Center and the Centre for Humanities at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, the second phase from 2013-15 included a series of events commemorating the Treaty of Utrecht and a documentary film.

Vivian May

This latest phase has reinaugurated the project following the invasion of Ukraine by Russia in 2022. Lambert partnered with Nocek to kick off this latest phase, including a launch event conference at the University of Warsaw, Poland, followed by conferences at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy and the Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem, both in the Czech Republic.

Friday’s symposium features a presentation by Gilgen, moderated by Elke Siegel, German studies, Cornell; a presentation by Patchen Markell, associate professor, government, Cornell, and moderated by , Renée Crown Professor in the Humanities and assistant professor, College of Arts and Sciences, Syracuse University; and a presentation by Neil Saccamano, associate professor, literatures in English, Cornell, and moderated by , associate professor, philosophy, College of Arts and Sciences, Syracuse University.

For this latest phase, Lambert edited a new version of Kant’s original treatise, which has been published and is available for event participants.

The College of Law is adding a to its clinical legal education offerings beginning in the Fall 2024 semester.

The Housing Clinic will operate in partnership with and the to provide representation to low-income tenants in eviction, housing conditions and other rental housing-related matters. Students in the clinic, working under the supervision of clinic director Professor , will handle all aspects of clients’ cases, including interviewing and counseling, investigation, negotiation, pleading and motion practice, courtroom advocacy and real estate procedure.

“The Housing Clinic will bring much-needed representation to an underserved population dealing with profound living condition issues,” says Dean . “At the same time, our students will be gaining practical legal skills essential to a legal career and a priority in the College of Law curriculum.”

“Housing cases move quickly and are tried almost immediately, providing students with multiple opportunities during the semester to see a case through to resolution—from the initial interview and filing of motions to settlement or trial, including appearing in Syracuse City Court,” says Pieples. “The Housing Clinic also provides students another opportunity to explore public interest law as a career.”

The Housing Clinic is underwritten by a grant from Legal Services of Central New York and the Legal Aid Society, which received additional New York State funding under the Tenant Dignity and Safe Housing Act.

The College of Law now offers students a choice of : the Bankruptcy Clinic, the Betty & Michael D. Wohl Veterans Legal Clinic, the Criminal Defense Clinic, the Disability Rights Clinic, the Housing Clinic, the Sherman F. Levey ’57, L’59 Low Income Taxpayer Clinic, and the Transactional Law Clinic.

A confluence of social, economic and systemic factors—under resourced communities, weak gun laws, inadequate educational and employment opportunities, and systemic racial inequities—all contribute to this disparity. But to what extent do place-based community factors also contribute to, or protect against, this elevated risk? And how do these factors converge to make our communities of color more or less safe?

Bryce Hruska

A team of researchers, including , assistant professor of public health in the David B. Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics, , chair and professor of public health at Falk, and Margaret Formica, associate professor of public health and preventive medicine at Upstate Medical University, seeks to better understand these questions as they relate to firearm violence risk and potential urban design solutions in Syracuse.

With over $250,000 of funding from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities over a two-year grant, the team hopes their analysis of the firearm violence landscape in Syracuse will have real-world applications as the city considers its future, especially as it relates to the I-81 Viaduct Project, as well as other urban renewal projects across the country.

In this Q&A, Hruska, the study’s principal investigator, shares more about the research and its potential to influence the development of public policies aimed at reducing firearm violence in Black communities in Syracuse and elsewhere.

Mary Calvi

But it was that curiosity—combined with the confidence acquired through her broadcast journalism classes in the and a big break provided by Sandy Montag ’85, president of The Montag Group—that helped Calvi realize her childhood dreams while remaining appreciative of the powerful impact of the alumni network.

“I feel indebted to Syracuse University and the incredible alumni connections and the powerful reach of this network of alumni. We’re all so open to connecting and sharing our advice and feedback with each other, and there’s a tremendous camaraderie among the alumni,” says Calvi, a 14-time New York Emmy-winning anchor on WCBS-TV in New York and anchor of “Inside Edition Weekend.”

Choosing Local News Over Cartoons

While her childhood friends were watching cartoons, Calvi vividly remembers being enthralled with the local newscasts. There was something powerful, captivating and mesmerizing about how the on-air reporters delivered the news to Calvi, who grew up in Yonkers, New York.

When she was in the ninth grade, Calvi first got her hands on a microphone and camera and started writing and producing her own newscasts for a small local community television station in her hometown.

“I was doing really local news, talking about the upcoming festival or what was happening in and around town that weekend, but I loved it,” Calvi says. “It was the power of curiosity. I was always curious about what was happening, but also what was the reason behind what was happening.”

Mary Calvi (right) reporting from the scene of a news story for WCBS-TV in New York.

While anyone who watches Calvi deliver the news today can’t help but see her as a natural, it wasn’t until she arrived at Syracuse University to study broadcast journalism that Calvi discovered the confidence she would need to launch her on-air career.

“There was no better journalism school in the country, and there was no other place I wanted to go. But just because I knew this was what I wanted to do from an early age, didn’t mean I actually thought I could do this. It really took me having the real support and encouragement from my Newhouse professors that allowed me to become confident that I could go out and do this for a living,” Calvi says.

Calvi recalls one instance where , the former department chair and current associate professor of broadcast and digital journalism, challenged her students to report on a breaking news scenario equipped only with a few tidbits of information and some video footage.

“I was terrified, but I ad-libbed my way through the report, and every time I went live afterwards, that experience came in handy. You have to go through the raw emotions of being live in the field to catapult yourself to that next level of reporting, because it really forces you to fix any problems you might have with your on-air delivery or your writing,” Calvi says.

Covering an Unprecedented Day in American History

Calvi considers herself to be an adept researcher, someone who is always prepared for that day’s story. But nothing could have prepared her for the challenges of reporting on the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001.

On that fateful day when terrorists killed nearly 3,000 people and injured more than 6,000 others in the worst attack against the homeland in our nation’s history, Calvi was on the air for 18 consecutive hours, delivering the latest updates to a terrified audience while fielding phone calls from scared citizens frantically searching for their loved ones.

“It’s very difficult to put into words what that day was like. It was devastating and even hard for me now to go to that site. We were just trying to deliver the news as it was happening There was the breaking news piece of it, but also the humanity side of it, the families of those who were lost. It was so difficult. Over the years, I’ve covered every remembrance, and it really doesn’t get much easier for the families,” Calvi says.

The unprecedented events of Sept. 11 really hit home for Calvi, a native New Yorker, who also covered the World Trade Center bombing on Feb. 26, 1993, one of her first-ever on-air news reports. In both instances, knowing there was a priority placed on providing viewers with the most up-to-date information, Calvi was able to demonstrate great empathy while interviewing survivors and family members who had lost a loved one.

“It really hits you hard as a reporter when you talk to those who go through tragedies. We talk about breaking news and getting the story in this industry, but so many of us, especially in a market like New York City, have met families who are dealing with terrible tragedies. The reporter must go to the family of that victim and talk to them. It really changes your perspective about the news business, but also about life in many ways. You really get a true sense of the impact these stories are having that you’re reporting on,” Calvi says.

Relating to the pain of losing a family member or a friend is not a new feeling for Calvi, who was a junior at Syracuse University when terrorists bombed Pan Am Flight 103 on Dec. 21, 1988, killing 270 people, including 35 Syracuse students returning from a semester abroad.

Investigative Reporter Becomes Accomplished Author

Calvi’s storytelling skills aren’t limited to television. She has found success as a , relying on her talents as a reporter to shine a light on two stories of romance involving well-known American presidents.

Mary Calvi’s second book, “If a Poem Could Live and Breathe: A Novel of Teddy Roosevelt’s First Love,” features the actual love letters between Roosevelt and Alice Lee.

Calvi’s first book, “Dear George, Dear Mary,” described how, before George Washington met his eventual wife, Martha, he fell for Mary Eliza Philipse, one of the richest women in America who was from Calvi’s hometown. After sorting through old letters, journal entries and publications from the time, Calvi uncovered the facts that served as the basis for her novel, “an unbelievable story of love, deception and vengeance,” according to Calvi.

Her second book, “If a Poem Could Live and Breathe: A Novel of Teddy Roosevelt’s First Love,” features the actual love letters between Roosevelt and Alice Lee. Those letters were long rumored to have been destroyed or lost to time, but a persistent Calvi eventually discovered not only the letters, but never-before-seen photos of the two lovebirds.

“With both of these books, I knew there was an exclusive story. I wanted to share their stories and their voices with the world because I think they were both wronged in history for many reasons. Mary was named a traitor during the American Revolution, while Alice was marked as someone incapable of intellectual growth. It was quite a thrill being able to share their voices and tell these long-forgotten stories,” Calvi says.

Another case of Calvi’s curiosity paying off.

On , Bhan and her student fellows present their findings at the Lender Center symposium, “DeCoded Vision: Land, Bodies and AI in Syracuse,” from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at the Sheraton Syracuse University Hotel & Conference Center’s Comstock Room. The event is open to the campus community; is required.

The researchers will define AI and show how the technology transfers to industry, workforce training, community development policies and such everyday activities as police presence and the use of technology in social contexts. They will discuss how AI technologies are fueling the “Syracuse Surge,” a city- and regionwide initiative boosting technology education, tech-job training and new industries, and offer insights about their exploration.

Student fellows are ParKer Bryant, a Ph.D. student in literacy education, ; Aren Burnside, a Ph.D. student in anthropology, Maxwell School; Nadia Lyngdoh-Sommer ’25, a sociology major in the ; Cheryl Olanga ’25, a computer science major in the ; and Anna Terzaghi ’24, an international relations and anthropology major and a member of the in the College of Arts and Sciences.

In this SU News Q&A, Bhan previews key findings.

John Zogby

While the candidates are nearly neck and neck in recent polls, Zogby says a high percentage of voters remain undecided, “not because they don’t know anything about Joe Biden or Donald Trump.” He added, “they’re undecided because they’re not sure they’re going to vote.”

Zogby shared this perspective during a March 1 State of Democracy lecture organized by the Maxwell School’s Campbell Public Affairs Institute. Titled “Campaign 2024: Super Tuesday and Beyond,” the event was held over Zoom and, in addition to Zogby, featured a panel of Maxwell political science faculty members: Shana Kushner Gadarian, professor and associate dean for research; Baobao Zhang, assistant professor; and Mark Brockway, assistant teaching professor.

Grant Reeher, professor of political science and Campbell director, moderated the 90-minute conversation, starting with a question for Gadarian: “What do you think is the most important thing that our viewers should have at the forefront of their minds, at this point in the election cycle—something that they should remember or keep an eye out as we head into Super Tuesday?”

Gadarian said voters ought to consider what issues are important to them and help steer the conversation among candidates to those issues. “One of the things that would be good to keep an eye on are what are the policies that voters say they care about,” she said, later adding, “It’s not simply about who’s ahead in the polls, it’s about the policies that American government can affect.”

Brockway echoed the sentiment. “Politicians want you to pay attention to issues that they want you to pay attention to, not necessarily the issues that are important to your life and the lives of people around you,” he said.

Zhang said she is concerned about the impact of artificial intelligence on the election “and lots of other elections going forward.”

“I don’t want to give you a doomsday scenario saying AI is going to ruin everything, but it will make certain things more challenging,” said Zhang, who is a senior research associate with the Autonomous Systems Policy Institute and one of 15 scholars from across the U.S. chosen to serve in the inaugural cohort of AI2050 Early Career fellows. “For instance, recently in New Hampshire, we have seen this case where someone used a robocall to spoof President Joe Biden’s voice telling people to abstain from voting.”

While the Federal Communications Commission has since banned such calls, Zhang said the issue of deep fakes and false information will no doubt play a role in the campaign season, especially on social media. She encouraged voters to “stay vigilant, check the source,” and, “if it seems like a viral thing that is becoming increasingly popular, make sure that before you hit the share button, to verify that it’s actually factual information.”

Zhang, who recently received U.S. citizenship and registered to vote, then pivoted to voter turnout. “Neither of the candidates are really super popular among the public right now,” she said.

Later in the conversation, Zogby shared the response he received from fellow Arab Americans, polled in Michigan ahead of Super Tuesday. They were in a “hell no, we won’t go” stage, he said. “In this instance you hear Arab Americans saying, ‘We voted for Joe Biden and we like his stance on infrastructure and the money that has come into Dearborn, you know, we like his stance on this and we like his stance on that, but we’re not going to vote for him this time because of his stance on Gaza.’”

Gaza, Zogby said, has become a “wedge issue,” even among Democrats. “Just on that issue alone, we have folks that are going to say, ‘We don’t have a candidate out there,’” he added.

Reeher pointed out that this is the first election in which both frontrunners have held the nation’s highest office. “We’ve got two four-year records to compare,” he said, asking the panelists if it changes the dynamics of the election in any way.

Zhang said she teaches statistics and noted that accurate comparisons are impossible when conditions are not controlled. Because of the public’s tendency to be biased toward more recent events, voters may be more focused on what has occurred during Biden’s presidency, she said.

Brockway agreed, adding that Trump has an advantage in being able to shape the narrative about his more distant presidency. While she agreed that Trump may benefit from voters’ “memory hole,” Gadarian said the Biden campaign can benefit from comparisons in how both handled COVID-related policies pertaining to health and the economy.

Zogby said he used to be able to “go to the bank” on the polling question “Are things generally headed in the right direction or the wrong track?” But hyperpolarization has persisted since the election of George W. Bush. He said since the election of Trump and through the Biden presidency, a high percentage of polled Americans say we’re on the “wrong track.”

Reasons run the gamut. “While there is indeed economic growth and all the economic indicators that we’ve traditionally relied upon are pointing in a very positive direction, there’s the Dobbs decision—Roe v. Wade; there are climate disasters; even with FBI reporting that crime—especially violent crime—is going down, the perception is different,” Zogby said.

The top issue among voters, currently? “Today it is immigration,” he said. “I don’t know what the No. 1 issue is going to be six months from now.”

Organized by the Campbell Public Affairs Institute at the Maxwell School, the Lecture Series provides a forum for meaningful discussions of public issues that cut across traditional disciplinary boundaries. The next event in the series is March 22 and will feature Pratap Bhanu Mehta, the Laurence S. Rockefeller Visiting Professor for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton University, for a talk titled “Democracy, Authoritarianism and Nationalism: India in Comparative Perspective.”

Photo illustration by Peter Pietrangelo, USA TODAY Network

Police vehicle accidents and the impact such crashes have had on communities across New York State are the focus of a new����involving Newhouse School students working in partnership with reporters from the USA Today Network and Central Current.

The first two stories from the “Driving Force” investigative series were published last week on��, the result of exhaustive reporting that began in June 2023. The initial stories looked at����and����for officers in New York State, with more articles set to be published over the next few months.

At the Newhouse School of Public Communications, the project was led by , knight chair in data and explanatory journalism, and , assistant professor of��magazine, news and digital journalism. Students in three of Upton’s data journalism classes read hundreds of pages of documents, pulling out details such as the type of conduct, date, officer involved and the resulting discipline in a process called “data tagging.”

The Driving Force reporting team meets at the Newhouse School in September 2023. (Photo by William Ramsey, USA Today Network)

The exercise helped the students to grasp the importance of how government PDFs can be converted into data for analysis, Upton and Husain said. The team went through the records, court papers and other state and police documents to locate individuals who were injured or killed in police vehicle accidents.

Overall, the reporting collaboration now includes 35,000 records from 115 departments ranging from those in large urban areas to village departments with only a handful of officers.

Upton and Husain said the partnership is building a public-facing police vehicle crash database. It plans to hold workshops to help the public and other journalists inspect local police department documents and understand the impact police vehicle crashes have had on communities.

The investigation was supported with funding from the��. That project is funded by the Google News Initiative in partnership with Northwestern University-Medill.

.

Jennifer Stromer-Galley

The (IDJC) has been awarded a $250,000 research grant from and use of the company’s graph database technology as part of an initiative to identify misinformation trends in the U.S. presidential election and other top 2024 contests.

, senior associate dean and professor at the and a nationally recognized expert in political campaigns and misinformation, will lead a team of researchers across the University and work with the Washington-based IDJC to illuminate hidden trends and actors spreading and influencing inaccurate information targeting U.S. voters through social media.

“Millions of Americans’ voting decisions are shaped by what they see on social media or hear from friends basing their own information on non-news sources,” says Kramer Director of the IDJC and a professor of practice in the Newhouse School of Public Communications.

“These areas are ripe for misinformation and disinformation campaigns from domestic and foreign actors,” Talev says. “Neo4j’s technology can allow us to see commonalities and hidden connections in a way that can shed light on these practices and help the public make fact-based decisions.”

Margaret Talev

The Neo4j award represents the first competitive grant for IDJC, a joint University initiative of the and .

The research team’s efforts focus on dissecting misinformation themes, pinpointing origins of messages and tracing misinformation by collecting and algorithmically classifying ads run on Facebook and Instagram as well as social media posts on Facebook and X, formerly known as Twitter. The project will also gather input from journalists and the public about the 2024 presidential election, and races for U.S. Senate and key congressional districts.

“One of the things we want to know is how the information environment and misinformation might be making people doubt the electoral process and whether it’s working properly,” says , research director for IDJC and a political science professor in the Maxwell School.

“Misinformation could not just affect whether voters turn out in the current election, but whether they turn out in future elections,” Dunaway said.

Johanna Dunaway

Stromer-Galley’s previous work on the project cataloged social media ad campaigns during the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. The Neo4j award is intended to collect similar data and to enhance the visual display for user interactions.

“I don’t think these kinds of opportunities would be possible without the institute to coalesce and bring together a set of scholars from across the university who all share a common passion and concern about the health and state of our democracy and journalism,” Stromer-Galley says.

Story by Emma Hudson

The recently launched Carnegie-Maxwell Policy Planning Lab brings together emerging national security leaders, subject matter experts and seasoned policy professionals to provide a six-month program for emerging foreign affairs leaders.

Program participants will attend two weekend-long, in-person workshops where they will analyze contemporary regional and functional issues, identify challenges and formulate policy. In addition to the workshops, the program includes an online seminar focused on developing management and leadership skills organizers say are critical as foreign policy experts progress in their careers.

Each cohort can accommodate up to 20 participants; there are no associated costs, as the lab is supported by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, a grantmaking foundation established in 1911 by Andrew Carnegie to support the “advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding.”

The $400,000 Carnegie award is provided through its Bridging the Gap initiative, which seeks to connect policy and academic communities to positively impact foreign policy decision-making.

Michael John Williams

Michael John Williams, associate professor of public administration and international affairs and director of the master of arts in international relations program, was awarded the funding on behalf of Maxwell and serves as the lab’s founding director. The lab will be situated in the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs at Maxwell.

“We’re grateful to the Carnegie Corporation for its support and recognition of the critical role this lab and training will provide those working in the field of foreign affairs,” says Williams. “This is a wonderful opportunity to connect busy policymakers who are inundated with challenges with scholars who have time to study issues in-depth and mull through opportunities for the future. Bringing them together in this format will allow younger policymakers not only to think differently about the challenges they face, but also to form lifelong relationships with scholars working on issues germane to their interests.”

Williams says a quote by former U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson underscores the lab’s objective. In the early years of the Cold War, Acheson said the purpose of policy planning is to “anticipate the emerging form of things to come, to reappraise policies which had acquired their own momentum and went on after the reasons for them had ceased, and to stimulate and, when necessary, to devise basic policies crucial to the conduct of our foreign affairs.”

The Policy Planning Lab’s training program will be especially beneficial for those who have roughly five-to-seven years’ experience working in government, such as State Department employees and policy advisors in Congress, says Williams. Those interested in participating may apply or can be nominated by a colleague, supervisor or other professional affiliate.

Each cohort will focus on a timely international topic. The first program’s theme is “Postwar: Europe, Ukraine and the Future of European Order.” It begins with an in-person workshop at Syracuse University from April 19-21; the second in-person session will be held at the University’s Minnowbrook Lodge in the Adirondacks from Aug. 17-20.

Williams brings expertise to the topic; he recently returned from a , funded by a Fulbright-North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Security Studies Award. Based at the Centre for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy at the Brussels School of Governance, he examined NATO, Russia and the enduring war in Ukraine.

Policy Planning Lab participants will likewise benefit from Williams’ Moynihan Institute colleagues, who bring a range of perspectives and focus areas. Tetiana Hranchak, for instance, is a visiting assistant teaching professor who fled her home in Ukraine following the Russian invasion because she was at risk due to her research on the politics of memory. Brian Taylor, professor of political science and director of the Moynihan Institute, authored “The Code of Putinism” (Oxford University Press, 2018), which shows how the mentality of Russian President Valdimir Putin has shaped the country’s politics over the past two decades.

“The Policy Planning Lab aligns with Moynihan’s mission to support scholarship, training and practice in global affairs,” says Taylor. “It addresses a critical need, providing an opportunity for younger policymakers to step outside the day-to-day and think deeply about global challenges, and an opportunity for scholars to gain insights and perspective from program participants who are on the frontlines of these issues.”

The Carnegie funding supports the lab for the next two years. Williams says additional support is possible to ensure its longevity. “We are open to additional sponsorship by organizations that believe in the necessity of connecting the knowledge of scholars with policy formulation,” he says. “No matter where you look in the world today, from the current conflict in the Middle East, to the rise of China in Asia and the surge of organized crime across Latin America, there are any number of problems where policymakers could well utilize in-depth academic knowledge.”

Other initiatives funded by Carnegie’s Bridging the Gap program include the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins University and the Teaching, Research & International Policy lab at the College of William and Mary. The original Bridging the Gap program began at American University (AU) under the leadership of James Goldgeier and Bruce Jentleson; Williams is an alumnus of the AU program.

Additionally, Bridging the Gap sponsors a book series, for which there is another Maxwell School faculty connection: Catherine Herrold’s “Delta Democracy: Pathways to Incremental Civic Revolution in Egypt and Beyond” (Oxford University Press, 2020) is among its supported works and was awarded the Virginia A. Hodgkinson Research Book Prize in November 2021.

NBC News plans to report findings each month, giving faculty and researchers potential opportunities to discuss or analyze results on the network’s platforms.

Engagious, which will conduct the focus groups, and Sago, which recruits respondents, IDJC is developing questions for the monthly online panels with key voting blocs within each state. The first focus group panel was conducted Jan. 31 via Zoom and moderated by Engagious president Rich Thau. This initial installment focused on women voters from across Pennsylvania who previously backed Donald Trump but support abortion rights or oppose the 2022 landmark Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade.

The Institute for Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship is a joint University initiative of the and . Based in Washington, D.C., IDJC engages in nonpartisan research, teaching and public dialogue aimed at strengthening trust in news media, governance and society.

“As a top research university whose communications and public affairs schools are among the best in the country, Syracuse University is obligated to promote engaged citizenship and deliberative democracy for the sake of our students as well as our society,” says Vice Chancellor, Provost and Chief Academic Officer Gretchen Ritter.

“The work of IDJC helps elevate those efforts and provides insights into some of the most important elements of our democracy, including the role of a free press,” Provost Ritter says.

The hinge voters who are the focus of the 2024 Deciders project come from demographic groups that will likely play an outsized role in determining the outcome of the election. A different category of voters will be interviewed each month.

“This partnership will shed light on issues and factors impacting key groups of voters and how news consumption helps form their views,” Newhouse School Dean Mark J. Lodato says. “For our students, this project can provide a valuable learning experience into how voters respond to political reporting, helping our aspiring journalists discern how such reporting takes shape.”

“A critical part of solving the challenges we face as a nation begins with a foundation of understanding,” says Maxwell School Dean David M. Van Slyke. “This partnership builds that foundation by helping our researchers, students and the public at large better understand the people who may determine the 2024 election. This is exactly the sort of critical, policy-informing work that we envisioned when creating IDJC.”

The work of the Institute for Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship, which was established in 2022, spans elections, governance and media, as well as a host of other broad topics including technology, business, science and health.

“We are learning from participants how key issues in the news affect them personally and how that relates to their views toward candidates and voting,” says IDJC Kramer Director Margaret Talev.  “We also are interested to hear from them about where they get their news and information and how that relates to what they believe, who they trust and how they engage with society.”

The webinar will include members of the Parents Circle-Families Forum (PCFF), a grassroots organization of Palestinian and Israeli families who have lost immediate family members due to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The PCFF believes that the process of reconciliation between nations is a prerequisite to achieving a sustainable peace. Through the years, the PCFF has arranged about 8,500 dialogue meetings, with about 250,000 participating youth and adults.

During this virtual discussion moderated by Maxwell School Professor of Practice Catherine Gerard, PCFF members Arab Aramin (Palestine) and Ofer Lior (Israel) will tell their personal stories of bereavement and explain their choice to engage in reconciliation instead of revenge. Following their stories, Aramin and Lior will answer questions from the audience.

About the Speakers

The symposium will feature a panel of successful entrepreneurs, financial investors and legal experts in a discussion on the challenges that high-growth, privately held tech companies face as they take on private equity, venture capital or other forms of funding. Panelists will cover investment deals they have completed, trends in financing and their career paths in the technology commercialization space.

Those interested in the legal, financial, business and entrepreneurial aspects of high-growth companies are encouraged to attend. .

, professor of practice and executive director of the ILC, will moderate the discussion.

The event will be streamed live via the ILC and a recording will be made available for those who cannot attend.

The symposium is co-sponsored by the , the College of Law’s Corporate Law Society and Intellectual Property Law Society, and the at Syracuse University Libraries.

The panelists are:

Peter Alfano L’94, Partner,

Alfano represents private equity sponsors, corporations and lenders in a wide variety of domestic and cross-border finance transactions, including leveraged acquisitions, corporate financings, dividend recapitalizations, restructurings and asset-based lending transactions. He has experience across several tech industries and advises companies in connection with intercompany finance arrangements, corporate restructurings and general corporate matters, including for private equity-owned portfolio companies.

Luke Cooper L’01, Founding General Partner and Managing Director,

Cooper is the founding general partner and managing director at Latimer Ventures. Latimer Ventures is an enterprise-focused Venture Capital firm dedicated to helping Black and Hispanic founders build and exit the next RedHat, Datadog or Tableau. He spends most of his time fundraising and nurturing a strong pipeline of early-stage enterprise SaaS companies.

Before Latimer, Cooper was a 2x successfully exited enterprise software founder (Cybersecurity and Insurtech) with both exits to Fortune 300 acquirers. In 2020, he sold his company, Fixt, an enterprise-focused third-party administration software, to Assurant (NYSE:AIZ), a Fortune 300 leader in insurance risk management. After raising a $6.5 million Series A, he became one of three Black founders to reach a profitable exit that year.

James Kelly L’99, Partner and Chair, New York Private Equity,

Kelly is a strategic advisor to private equity funds and operating companies across many industries. He focuses his practice on representing private equity funds in all aspects of their investment activities, recently acting for Atlas Holdings, Bregal Partners, The Carlyle Group, Oaktree Capital Management and Stellex Capital Management, among several others.

He is recognized by The Legal 500 US in Private Equity Buyouts and has been recognized for numerous consecutive years by Chambers in New York M&A, has been featured in Buyouts, including a Buyouts Deal of the Year, The Deal, Bloomberg and Law360, as well as other leading publications. He has presented for several education providers, including Practicing Law Institute and Strafford, and has received recognition for his pro bono work, including the Pro Bono Publico Award from The Legal Aid Society. Kelly is a member of the College of Law Board of Advisors.

Lon Levin L’80, President,

Levin is president of SkySevenVentures, which invests in, advises and provides executive services for space and other technology businesses. He has more than 40 years of experience as an executive and entrepreneur in the telecommunications, media, and aerospace industries.

Recently, from 2017-2023, Levin was an executive for Lockheed Martin Space developing new businesses and markets. He served as president and chief executive officer of GEOshare, an entrepreneurial subsidiary of Lockheed Martin, and as vice president-new ventures.

Levin co-founded XM Satellite Radio and played executive leadership roles in the formation and development of other satellite, space and media companies, including Mobile Satellite Ventures, XM Canada, Slacker Radio, American Mobile Satellite Corporation, TerraStar Networks (mobile satellite), GEOshare (condosats) and Parsec (lunar telecommunications).

He served as a U.S. Delegate negotiating technology treaties at many International Telecommunication Union conferences and holds five telecommunication satellite patents. Levin has served as a special government employee on the Defense Department’s Defense Business Board and the NASA Advisory Council.

Levin is treasurer and a member of the Board of Directors of The Planetary Society and Board Member Emeritus of the Space Foundation, where has was chairperson from 2014-16.

Kevin Whittaker L’02, Chief Legal and Compliance Officer,

Whittaker is the chief legal and compliance officer and corporate secretary of Ripcord, a NASA spinoff specializing in the digital optimization of data through robotics and AI. Ripcord is backed by Silicon Valley’s leading investors, including Kleiner Perkins and Google Ventures.

Whittaker provides counsel on venture financing, M&A, operations, human resources and governance. As a member of the Executive Leadership Team, he plays a pivotal role in aligning the company’s business strategies with legal and compliance standards, fostering collaboration with stakeholders, customers and investors.

Whittaker was a speaker at Match-Up 2023, speaking on “AI Unleashed: Pioneering a New Epoch of Innovation,” which explored the profound impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on diverse industries and its pivotal role in shaping the future. Before becoming an in-house corporate counsel, he was a partner at Reed Smith, and of counsel to Baker McKenzie and Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe.

A team of Maxwell School students took first place in the City of Syracuse’s inaugural Open Data Day competition. Shown, from left to right, are winners Ryan Lamson, Debora Peci, Akarsh Bhutani and Mayor Ben Walsh G’05. Walsh presented their prize. Not shown is team member Liam Hannah.

The class, composed mostly of students in the Maxwell School’s current master of public administration (M.P.A.) cohort, took part in the City of Syracuse’s inaugural Open Data Day.

Open Data Day was the culmination of a monthlong “hackathon” challenge in which city leaders enlisted the public to use open and available datasets to address challenges, such as vehicle and pedestrian safety and fixing street infrastructure. Between Oct. 4 and Nov. 4, teams created projects that utilized at least one dataset in the city’s . This year’s topic—transportation—aligns with the city’s Vision Zero program, which aims to improve traffic safety.

Ueda-Ballmer, associate professor of public administration and international affairs, came across the portal while preparing her course and thought it was a good way for students to connect open data with public policy. She invited the city’s data program manager in the Office of Analytics, Performance & Innovation (API), Jason Scharf, to present the data portal to her class.

Ueda-Ballmer told students their participation in the challenge was a voluntary, ungraded opportunity. Out of 38 students in the class, 12 participated. Two teams of her students won prizes: first and second places.

“The data challenge provided them with a unique and valuable opportunity to apply the knowledge they’ve gained in the M.P.A. program to a real-world problem,” says Ueda-Ballmer, who also served as a competition judge. “Furthermore, I believe that their exceptional performance in the data challenge competition showcased the strength of our students.”

The team composed of students Kimberley Ojeda Rojas, Muhammad Yousaf Dilshad, Haris Khan, Omer Keles and Josephine Galdamez took second place. analyzed city response time to community member service requests made to SyrCityline through the SeeClickFix application, which allows reporting of non-emergency problems to the city. The team found an association between how long the city takes to respond with geographies of racial and economic inequality.

Maxwell students also took second place in Open Data Day. From left are winners Josephine Galdamez, Muhammad Yousaf Dilshad, Kimberley Ojeda Rojas and Haris Khan, with Mayor Ben Walsh ’05 M.P.A. Not shown is teammate Omer Keles.

“It’s not only about having these datasets open to the public, but wanting to do something about it,” Ojeda Rojas said. “[Our team] wanted to not only show the information geographically but add something that we can all relate to. …The way that the city is handling these requests may have something to do with the level of income or percentage of people of color in some neighborhoods.”

Judges evaluated projects for creativity, “wow factor,” execution and informational value.

Ryan Lamson, Akarsh Bhutani, Liam Hannah and Debora Peci ultimately took first place for which utilized multiple datasets to show the need for a comprehensive bike infrastructure in Syracuse. They were inspired by witnessing and experiencing several near accidents on Euclid Avenue, which is heavily trafficked at intervals throughout the day with pedestrian, micro mobility and varying vehicle classes.

The competition gave out $1,800 in prizes: $1,000 (first place), $500 (second place) and $300 (third place). Mayor Ben Walsh G’05 was on hand to award prizes, and city leaders say they were thrilled with Maxwell’s involvement.

“​​I am definitely looking to continue those partnerships to be able to present to classes to let them know what opportunities we have coming up, what data events and challenges,” says Scharf. “I believe that they learned from my presentation but then also when they came and presented their projects, we learned a lot. My supervisor [Nicholas Diaz] calls it a virtuous cycle. We help teach them and then we in turn can receive the benefit of that analysis, those insights.”

In addition to the hackathon competition, Open Data Day included presentations and breakout sessions on such topics as analyzing smart devices, creating online maps and using augmented reality in urban change. Among the speakers was Mike Fudge, professor of practice and program director in the School of Information Studies, who talked about using open data with Python, a programming language.

Seven of Ueda-Ballmer’s student participants are in both the M.P.A. program and pursuing a certificate of advanced study in data analytics. Three other participants are Humphrey fellows taking part in a 10-month Maxwell program that hosts students from 10 emerging democracies and developing countries for graduate study, professional development and cultural exchange.

In addition to providing a real-life learning opportunity, Ojeda Rojas says the challenge gave her good experience working with others with diverse backgrounds, skills and interests.�� She described breaking up tasks for those with prior experience in coding, software and data visualization as well as pursuing different roles for storytelling, literature review and database solutions.

“It was a lot of collaboration,” she says, “and I got to meet some of my teammates a little bit closer because though we do have classes together, this experience brought me closer to them.”

The city hopes to host open data challenges annually, focusing on new topics or social issues each year.

Story by Michael Kelly

It is not every day that Syracuse University partners with an international organization representing more than 700 million people.

The and the University have announced a new agreement that strengthens and expands an existing relationship by providing internships for students studying abroad in Strasbourg, France, as well as research opportunities for students and faculty.

The agreement provides for up to 12 student internships at the council each year, widens the number of departments and divisions that Syracuse students can engage with, and broadens opportunities for research collaboration for Syracuse students and faculty.

Founded after World War II, the Council of Europe is Europe’s leading human rights organization, composed of 46 member-states, such as Ukraine, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Turkey and Italy. Separate from the European Union, it is akin to a “United Nations of Europe” and strives to uphold human rights, democracy and the rule of law.

The agreement was signed by Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs Dean David M. Van Slyke and Deputy Secretary General of the Council of Europe Bjørn Berge on Dec. 8 in Washington, D.C.

“While the United States is not a member of the Council of Europe, it has close links as an observer state, and your presence here today, Mr. Deputy Secretary General, is a sign that the United States and Council of Europe are indeed partners,” said Van Slyke at the signing event. “Syracuse University and the Maxwell School are proud to be part of the council’s relationship with the United States and to play our modest part in fostering understanding between our two societies and in furthering a partnership so vital to the well-being of the world.”

Maxwell School Dean David M. Van Slyke, left, shakes hands with Miroslav Papa, director of political affairs and external relations with the Council of Europe, next to Bjørn Berge, deputy secretary general of the council, at an event in Washington, D.C., to celebrate a new agreement between the council and Syracuse University.

The relationship between the Council of Europe and Syracuse University began in the early 1990s, growing out of Syracuse Strasbourg’s strong historical reputation and network of partnerships in the region. Through the years, an estimated 300 Syracuse students studying abroad in Strasbourg have benefited from council internships, adding to the wide array of programs affiliated with the Syracuse University Center in Strasbourg.

Berge asked those in attendance at the signing event to consider the diverse array of former program participants now working in public service on both sides of the Atlantic. He described the relationship as a “win-win” for the Council of Europe and the University.

“There could also be no better moment to reinforce this relationship and demonstrate our shared determination to shape a better world,” Berge said. “The memorandum of understanding that we sign today with Syracuse University is one step in that direction. It represents an important trans-Atlantic link with a prestigious university.”

Berge was joined at the signing celebration by Miroslav Papa, director of political affairs and external relations at the Council of Europe.

In addition to Van Slyke, Syracuse representatives at the event included Steve Bennett, senior vice president for international programs and academic operations, and Margaret Talev, Kramer Director of the Washington, D.C., based Institute for Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship (IDJC).

Bennett shared that in the past year, Syracuse students have served as interns in numerous council departments and divisions, from the directorate general of human rights and the rule of law to the Pompidou Group, which focuses on international drug policy.

“For Syracuse University, these are precisely the types of experiential learning opportunities that our students’ treasure and that are a cornerstone of what makes a Syracuse education exceptional,” he said.

The Pompidou Group has long enjoyed a special relationship with the Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics. Beginning in 2010, Falk College engaged with the Pompidou Group, leading to the 2019 creation of the International Drug Policy Academy. The academy’s courses are developed with Falk faculty and provide an opportunity for Syracuse students to engage with cutting-edge issues in drug policy with international stakeholders from across the world.

The relationship with the Council of Europe has also been a draw for Maxwell School students from across disciplines. Senior Riona Sheik interned with the Council in the spring of 2023. “This was a very rewarding internship because I was able to gain firsthand experience with social welfare and insight into how different European social rights are from the United States,” said Sheik, who is majoring in political science and international relations at the Maxwell School and finance at the Whitman School of Management.

Syracuse University students participated in the World Forum on Democracy at the Council of Europe in November. Shown, from left to right, are Nathaniel Hasanaj, Iraklis Kapanidis, William Johnson and Grace “Gray” Reed.

An opportunity to intern with the Council was a draw for Carina Sarracino, who is majoring in political science and international relations. While studying abroad from January to April of 2023, she gained an up-close view of the council’s vital work while interning under the mentorship of its director of political affairs and external relations. Among the many meaningful opportunities was the chance to witness the adoption of a resolution that addressed the issue of sexual violence during wartime.

“Having an opportunity to see such an important resolution adopted, and to see firsthand how these processes work, was unparalleled,” said Sarracino.

Van Slyke said the agreement’s timing aligns with two milestones—50 years of Syracuse Abroad in Strasbourg and the Maxwell School’s 100th anniversary in 2024. Further, it is well-timed with the recent launch of the IDJC, a joint initiative of the Maxwell School and the S.I. Newhouse School of Communications.

“A broad range of Syracuse and Maxwell faculty and students are focused on issues related to polarization, misinformation and disinformation, access to information, and democracy,” Van Slyke said. “The new Institute for Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship, led by Margaret Talev, offers another potential resource, partner and source of collaboration. As Margaret has said, ‘Current and emerging challenges to democracy are everyone’s problem and can’t be fixed alone.’”

Established in 1974, offers fall and spring semester and summer programs for students across the University’s 13 schools and colleges. Approximately 150 students participate annually, taking classes and harnessing internships and other experiential learning opportunities at the Council of Europe and other organizations and institutions. Fluency in French is not a prerequisite for many programs, including the Council of Europe internship, which seeks both French and English speakers as the two official languages of council business.

“For students interested in international affairs, human rights, democracy, political science and related topics, Strasbourg is a great place to study internationally,” said Syracuse University Strasbourg Director John Goodman, who is a former diplomat for humanitarian organizations. He played an instrumental role in cultivating the University’s deepened relationship with the Council.

“Thanks to Syracuse’s 50-year presence in the city, students have direct access to working practitioners in major international bodies. It is extremely rare and valuable to have the chance to work inside some of the world’s preeminent inter-governmental institutions,” he added. “Syracuse’s relationship with the Council of Europe is a gem of an opportunity for Syracuse students.”

Story by Jessica Youngman and Cort Ruddy

Shubha Ghosh

, Crandall Melvin Professor of Law and director of the Syracuse Intellectual Property Law Institute, has been awarded a 2023-24 Wikimedia Race and Knowledge Equity (WRKE) Fellowship.

The is a one-year fellowship designed to explore the intersection of racial equity, free knowledge and the intellectual property ecosystem and to promote sound policy for achieving social justice through these overlapping disciplines.

For his fellowship grant, Ghosh plans to compile information about existing intellectual property (IP), science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), and artistic educational programs, with the goal of creating a map of this landscape, along with an analysis of these programs.

“I selected this focus because educational programs in entrepreneurship and IP at the K-12 level exist but have been understudied. Universities are the major avenues for commercializing technology in conjunction with private industry and government research labs. But by the time students enter college, the issues surrounding entrepreneurship and innovation come across as unfamiliar,” says Ghosh. “The development of entrepreneurship and IP education programs at the K-12 level was established to educate students about these issues earlier as they develop their own educational and career paths. My goal is to work, within existing channels of research, to better understand what these programs involve and whether they can be improved.”

Ghosh will disseminate his research through original writings in journals, book chapters and law reviews. “My research will also connect me with policymakers at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office who have just started to study these issues in depth and with nonprofit organizations like The Henry Ford in Detroit, which works with the Ford Museum and the Ford Foundation, to design programs on entrepreneurship and intellectual property in the Detroit metro area. The Henry Ford is also designing a comprehensive database of these programs throughout the United States. I will be analyzing this database as well as contributing to it,” he says.

About the Fellowship

The role of the WRKE Fellow is to undertake scholarly and other research, produce scholarly publications and public intellectual writings intended to contribute to the body of free knowledge and racial equity scholarship, and to organize and present policy and community educational programming relevant to the Fellowship’s research and education agenda. The WRKE Fellow will work at the direction of supervising Institute for Intellectual Property and Social Justice (IIPSJ) and Howard University School of Law (HUSL) personnel (in consultation with Wikimedia Foundation legal and policy staff), and receive support, guidance and mentorship from the WRKE Fellowship Advisory Board, made up of distinguished legal academics in the field of intellectual property social justice. Members of the Board are on hand to provide the fellow with scholarly insight, policy expertise and general guidance where needed to achieve fellowship goals.

Among other things, the research and programming will examine the role of doctrinal elements within the IP law in contributing to traditions of systemic IP racial inequity and related injustice. The resulting research analyses will be put toward constructing free knowledge initiatives to improve the understanding and use of intellectual property in marginalized and underserved communities. The ultimate goal of the research is to improve racial equities through the IP ecosystem and related socioeconomic aspects of the political economy, and will be available to the general public, IP law and policymakers and IP practitioners.

The fellowship is funded through a grant from the Knowledge Equity Fund at the Wikimedia Foundation and is jointly administered by the IIPSJ and HUSL.

The idea for a new book about mindfulness by Adam Avin ’26, a sophomore in the Newhouse School of Public Communications, is rooted in the days he spent with his great grandparents growing up in Florida.

“Stress Less: Mindfulness for Teenagers” was years in the making for Avin, a��. Avin’s book made it to No. 1 on the Young Adult and Teen Social Science category on Amazon after being released in the fall.

(Photo courtesy of Adam Avin)

“The support I’ve gotten has been overwhelming,” Avin says in recalling his family’s reaction to the book.

As a child, Avin would sit on the couch next to his late great grandpa, Jack, who would impart words of wisdom: Think well to be well. Smile and the world will smile with you. Smile and say “thank you.”

Those simple but powerful phrases of positivity held sway, so much so that Avin wanted to find avenues to share those lessons about mindfulness with other children and teenagers.

First, Avin channeled his energy into creating the����at age 10. Wuf Shanti promotes health, wellness and happiness in children, and encourages peace and positivity. Wuf Shanti videos have been distributed by outlets including the Children’s Television Network, PBS stations and the Kidoodle streaming service for children.

While he was in high school during the COVID lockdown, Avin and Helen Maffini, an educator, author and consultant in the field of mindfulness and emotional intelligence, started interviewing experts over video chats as a way to keep conversations going.

The videos were a part of the��, a curriculum for middle and high schools across the country. Those virtual conversations ended up being the basis for “Stress Less.”

“Why not take all of that knowledge and have it written down and available every day,” Avin says. “We wanted to formulate the book in a way that a teenager would understand or want to read. It’s really important for teens to understand that they’re not alone, and hopefully something in the book resonates with them.”

Udonis Haslem (left) wrote the forward to Adam Avin’s book. (Photo courtesy of the Udonis Haslem Foundation)

The book even includes a forward by former Miami Heat forward and three-time NBA champion��, who was hired in November as the vice president of basketball development for the team.

Haslem is the founder of a foundation named after him that advocates for mental health in underserved communities. He also happens to be one of Avin’s favorite players on his favorite NBA team.

“Wow, what I would have given to have a book like this when I was growing up,” Haslem said in a��. “I’ve actually been using some of these tips, so let’s just say this book hit home for me.”

“Stress Less” walks readers through the importance behind how coping with emotions and stress in a healthy way is good for the mind and body. In the book, Avin talks about such tools as affirmations, breathwork, journaling and meditation.

Avin is certified in mindfulness-based stress reduction, and has become a mental health education advocate, speaking on the topic to groups. Avin����in 2019 about getting mindful programs into the education system.

His work has also been the subject of stories in outlets including Mindful Magazine, the Miami Herald and the South Florida Sun Sentinel.

“Stress Less” targets teens and young adults, and tips and lessons from the book can also apply to college students, especially during busy times of year like the end of the semester.

“One of the biggest things we talk about in the book, when you talk about mindfulness, is that no one practices it in the exact same way,” Avin says.

For some people, taking a little time to tune out the world to listen to music might calm them down during a crazy week of final exams and projects. For others, taking a walk or doing breathing exercises might do the trick.

Avin also draws from another member of his family—his late grandfather, Alan, for inspiration.

“My grandfather was a very positive person. It was hard for him to be positive when he was sick, but he said there was a place between negative and positive,” Avin says. “He said he would try to get to neutral. He still wanted to be a positive light for others.”

Joe Castiglione, the longtime radio voice of the Boston Red Sox, will be honored during Hall of Fame Weekend on July 19-22, 2024, in Cooperstown, New York. (Photo courtesy of the Boston Red Sox)

“Swing and a ground ball, stabbed by [Keith] Foulke. He has it, he underhands to first — and the Boston Red Sox are the world champions. For the first time in 86 years, the Red Sox have won baseball’s world championship. Can you believe it?” Castiglione told the audience as Red Sox players mobbed each other in celebration after snapping what was the second-longest World Series drought in baseball history.

The ball from the final out of that World Series is on display at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, and on Wednesday, Castiglione received word that, he, too, was heading to Cooperstown as the 2024 recipient of the Ford C. Frick Award, presented annually for excellence in broadcasting by the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. He joins fellow honoree Bob Costas ’74 (2018) as the only Orange alumni to win this award.

“I’m still stunned. It hasn’t sunk in, yet,” Castiglione said. “It’s such a tremendous honor to be recognized. It’s overwhelming to know your name will forever be in that broadcasters section with some of the best to ever do this.”

This was Castiglione’s fourth time being a finalist for the award. On the day the Hall of Fame came calling, Castiglione��went to put his cell phone on speaker so his wife, Jan, and son, Joe Jr., could hear the good news. Instead, Castiglione, an admitted technology klutz, hung up on the Hall of Fame.

“That was the longest 60 seconds of my life, waiting for them to call me back,” Castiglione recalled with a laugh. “But eventually they called back.”

Castiglione has been delivering his signature call, “Can you believe it?” as the radio voice of the Red Sox for 41 years, and when, on the second try, the Hall of Fame delivered this news, Castiglione said he was the one who couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“Josh Rawitch [the president] said, ‘You always like to say can you believe it, well Joe, you’re going into Cooperstown!’ and that was just my ultimate ‘Can you believe it’ moment,” Castiglione said. “I’ve had so much support from my wife of 52 years, Jan, and my family. I’ve had the support of the Red Sox, and the support of the fans. The fans have to accept you and trust you and Red Sox nation is very knowledgeable and very passionate. One of the reasons they connected with me is I’m passionate about the ballclub. People tell me they can tell if the Sox are winning or losing by the tone of my voice during the game. I’m blessed to have that connection with Red Sox nation.”

Learning From Baseball’s Best

Castiglione first fell in love with baseball on the radio by listening to the iconic Mel Allen broadcast New York Yankees’ games. Later, Castiglione was introduced to Ernie Harwell, the legendary radio voice of the Detroit Tigers.

Joe Castiglione (Photo courtesy of WEEI)

As he was breaking into sports broadcasting, Castiglione admits he spent a lot of time listening to both Allen and Harwell, picking up pointers on how to inform and entertain an audience, deftly blending stories with statistics to paint a picture of the action on the field.

“Describe what you see as it’s happening, and make sure you call the play in great detail so the fans have a good idea of what’s going on. Baseball is a storytelling game. Use those stories. A story tells a thousand words. This is entertainment. We’re trying to entertain and inform our audience,” Castiglione said on the when asked about the greatest lessons he learned from Allen and Harwell.

Castiglione will be honored during the Hall of Fame Awards Presentation as part of Hall of Fame Weekend on July 19-22, 2024, in Cooperstown. He joins Allen (a co-recipient of the first Ford C. Frick Award in 1978) and Harwell (1981) in the hallowed halls of Cooperstown, a place reserved for the best broadcasters the game has ever known.

Can’t Script History

In a decorated career full of highlights—Castiglione called four no-hitters and a pair of 20-strikeout gems from Roger Clemens—being the first person to broadcast a Red Sox title still stands out among all the other calls.

“I’d thought about what it would be like to call the last out of a Red Sox world championship for years, and I went back and forth in my mind. Finally, I concluded that I can’t script it. I don’t know how it’s going to end, so I’ll just react to what happens. I’ve known broadcasters that try to script it and they might mess it up. I was just hoping for something definitive. I didn’t want a diving catch where we wondered if he caught it or didn’t catch it. I wanted a definitive play and we got a simple ground ball to the pitcher. That was the best way it could have ever happened,” Castiglione said.

Castiglione earned an undergraduate degree from Colgate University and a master’s degree in television and radio from the . He credits Syracuse University and for helping him discover his voice as a play-by-play broadcaster.

When Castiglione was at Syracuse, in the summer of 1969, he made his inaugural trek to Cooperstown, the first of countless visits to the Hall of Fame. Nearly 55 years later, he will return to be honored as one of the best baseball broadcasters to ever call a game.

“It makes you want to pinch yourself to see if this is real. I’ve always known what I wanted to do ever since I found out I wasn’t good enough to be a ballplayer at age 10. I’ve had so many blessings in my life,” Castiglione said.

Besides calling Red Sox games, Castiglione also handled broadcast duties for both the Cleveland Indians (now Guardians) and the Milwaukee Brewers. In 2022, the home Fenway Park radio booth was named in Castiglione’s honor.

“The College of Law has a long history of producing successful graduates who have impacted the field of law in numerous positive ways,” says Provost Ritter. “As the college is poised for continued growth and success, I look forward to what the next chapter will bring. I thank the search committee members for their service and am eager to meet the candidates.”

The co-chairs of the search committee are Todd Berger, professor of law and director of advocacy programs, and Nina Kohn, David M. Levy L’48 Professor of Law.

Other members of the search committee are:

• Richard Alexander L’82, vice chair, Board of Trustees
• James Baker, professor of law and director, Institute for Security Policy and Law, College of Law
• Devon Brown, third-year student, College of Law
• Vincent Cohen Jr. ’92, L’95, voting trustee, Board of Trustees
• Shannon Gardner, teaching professor and associate dean for online education, College of Law
• Roy Gutterman, professor and director, Tully Center for Free Speech, S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications
• Courtney Abbott Hill, associate teaching professor, College of Law
• Mark J. Lodato, dean, S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications
• Cora True-Frost L’01, G’01, Bond, Schoeneck and King Distinguished Professor and professor of law, College of Law
• Jennifer Uryniak, assistant dean for finance and administration, College of Law
• Jamie Winders, associate provost for faculty affairs, Syracuse University

The search firm WittKieffer will assist the committee in all aspects of recruitment and selection.

Daniel McDowell

, associate professor of political science in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, has published an essay exploring the implications of Chinese bank expansion abroad in the 2022-23 Wilson China Fellowship Report “.”

In his piece, “Lending Tree: The Motives Behind and Implications of Chinese Bank Branch Growth in Foreign Markets,” McDowell shares what may result from the massive growth of China’s four largest banks in recent years. One potential consequence, he says, is the diminished ability by the U.S. government to leverage financial sanctions on China as a bargaining tool.

McDowell also explores the links between the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and branch locations while considering how branch presence may affect the use of China’s currency in cross-border trade settlement. The BRI is a global infrastructure development strategy adopted by the Chinese government in 2013.

“Chinese investment in infrastructure and related development ventures in a foreign market relies heavily on Chinese firms, especially state-owned enterprises (SOEs), to execute the projects. Foreign activity of Chinese SOEs, then, generates the need for financial services between the mainland and overseas investment locations, which should provide incentives for major Chinese banks—which operate as financial arms of the state—to expand into these same foreign markets,” McDowell says in the essay.

He adds, “In the medium-term, the presence of Chinese branches in these markets could facilitate deeper ties between host-country businesses and China. More importantly for U.S. interests, these branches could help facilitate cross-border payments in China’s currency, the renminbi, diminishing the dollar’s role in these markets and weakening Washington’s capacity to use financial sanctions as a coercive tool.”

The Wilson Center selected McDowell last year for a 2022-23 Wilson China Fellowship. The China-focused non-residential fellowship is supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The Wilson Center is chartered by Congress as the official memorial to President Woodrow Wilson, and is a nonpartisan policy forum for tackling global issues through independent research and open dialogue.

Story by Michael Kelly

College of Law/Maxwell School professor the Hon. James E. Baker (center) is sworn in as one of eight judges on the Data Protection Review Court.

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland recently held a formal investiture ceremony for the Data Protection Review Court (DPRC) at the U.S. Justice Department. The , professor of law, director of the and professor of public administration in the , was formally sworn in as one of eight judges on the DPRC.

Last October, the attorney general issued regulations creating the DPRC within the Office of Privacy and Civil Liberties at the Department of Justice. The DPRC serves as the second level of the new redress process established by the president through Executive Order 14086, which also strengthened other safeguards for U.S. signals intelligence activities.

The DPRC will independently review determinations made by the civil liberties protection officer of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in response to qualifying complaints sent by individuals through appropriate public authorities that allege certain violations of U.S. law in the conduct of U.S. signals intelligence activities.

For more information on the DPRC and the bios of the DPRC judges, visit the .