Rogan Kersh Appointed Provost and Professor at Wake Forest

Wake Forest has appointed Rogan Kersh as the University's new provost and professor of political science. A Wake Forest alumnus, Kersh currently serves as the associate dean of academic affairs and professor of public policy at New York University's Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.

Kersh will assume his new duties as Wake Forest's chief academic officer with responsibility for supervising and administering the academic programs and plans of the university's Reynolda Campus this summer.

Kersh will report directly to Wake Forest president Nathan O. Hatch. He will supervise the deans of the undergraduate College, the Schools of Business, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the School of Law, the School of Divinity and the Library.

“Wake Forest was my first academic home,” Kersh said. “During my undergraduate years and regular return visits to campus I developed an abiding devotion to the university; its faculty, students, and staff; and its traditions. I look forward to returning to my alma mater in a professional capacity.”

After graduating with a BA in political science from Wake Forest in 1986, Kersh earned two masters' degrees and a PhD in political science from Yale University, where he also began his teaching career. He taught political science and public administration at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University for 10 years and has served in his current role at NYU since 2006. He also studies the US health care policy system and is a nationally recognized expert on obesity. He is currently part of NYU faculty teams holding two separate National Institutes of Health (NIH) research grants on obesity politics.

In addition to his professional credentials, Kersh brings to the position longstanding connections to Wake Forest. He served for more than a decade on the selection committee for the Reynolds, Carswell, and other named merit scholarships, traveling to Wake Forest each spring semester for a four-day selection event. Kersh also served as an informal mentor to several of the scholar recipients during and after their time at Wake Forest, as well as graduates who enrolled in masters programs at NYU, Syracuse, and Yale. “The appointment of a provost is one of the most important decisions that a University president must make,” said Hatch. “Rogan brings recent and relevant leadership experience and a commitment to preserving the core values of Wake Forest while growing in new directions. He is a dynamic leader who has used his talents for teaching, strategic planning and administrative management to the benefit of every university he has served. I could not be more pleased to welcome him back to Wake Forest.”

Kersh is active in the wider public-policy and political-science profession. He has worked with NYU colleagues to advance social justice and diversity issues at the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration (NASPAA). Two years ago he was elected as a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. Kersh currently serves as president of APSA's organized section on health politics and policy.

Sonenshein Named Executive Director of PBI

Raphael J. Sonenshein has been named executive director of the Edmund G. “Pat” Brown Institute (PBI) of Public Affairs at California State University, Los Angeles.

Sonenshein began his tenure at PBI in February 2012, replacing Jaime Regalado, who retired after heading the Institute since 1991. The Institute is a nonpartisan public policy center dedicated to sustaining the vision and legacy of former California Governor Pat Brown through convening public policy forums, engaging multisector stakeholders and diverse communities, and conducting policy research and community-driven initiatives.

“ PBI is a jewel, one that reflects the vision of the great governor for whom it is named, and the work of the many people who built and have sustained it for more than two decades,” said Sonenshein. “I hope to further expand the Institute's impact on the daily lives of the people who live in our neighborhoods, our cities, our region and our state, and on the public policies that affect us all. For me, it's the opportunity of a lifetime.”

Sonenshein was chair of the Division of Politics, Administration and Justice at Cal State Fullerton (CSUF), a professor of political science and public administration, and the director of the Division's Center for Public Policy. He taught at CSUF since 1982.

Sonenshein is also sought after as a political expert by many local and national media outlets including CNN, NPR, KPCC, and KCRW.

Sonenshein received a BA in public policy from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and a MA and PhD in political science from Yale University.

Kai He Wins East Asia Institute Fellowship

Kai He, assistant professor of political science at Utah State University, was recently awarded one of five fellowships at the East Asia Institute in South Korea for scholars with expertise in peace, governance, and development in East Asia.

Professor He, an expert of international security and political economy, will spend three weeks in Asia meeting with leading experts of Chinese policy about his current research project analyzing the country's foreign policy behavior.

The EAI Fellows Program was established in 2005 as an international exchange program for up-and-coming scholars of East Asian Studies from outside the region to present new work at partnering higher education institutions in Seoul, Shanghai, Tokyo, Beijing, and Taipei. It enables researchers like professor He to further develop their peer network and connect with practitioners in their fields. Fellows are selected for developing potentially ground-breaking research.

He's topic, “Explaining China's Foreign Policy Crisis Behavior after the Cold War,” examines the actions of China's leaders since the Cold War and searches for patterns in their decision-making. He will apply Prospect Theory — a psychological theory about decision-making under risk conditions — to China's international relations policies. The project is based on He's research, performed in China in summer 2011 and funded by a USU faculty seed grant.

“I try to do research that has policy relevance,” He said. “The fellowship is going to give me the opportunity to meet with the leading scholars of Asian politics to talk about my work and get some feedback. Right now, we don't have a Cold War with China, but there is a lot of trouble between China and the United States and between China and its neighbors.”

Understanding the conditions under which leaders make risky foreign policy choices in China may help guide Sino-US relations in the future and help reduce tensions, he said.

Professor He is the author of Institutional Balancing in the Asia-Pacific: Economic Interdependence and China's Rise (London and New York: Routledge, 2009). Prior to his career in academia, He worked as a research fellow at a leading policy think-tank in Beijing. After earning his doctorate at Arizona State University, He taught at Spelman College and Georgia State University.

He spent the 2009–10 academic year as a visiting postdoctoral research associate in the Princeton-Harvard China and the World Program in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. Professor He was also a 2009–10 Bradley research fellow of the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and joined the faculty at Utah State University in the department of political science in 2009.

Jeffrey E. Cohen Wins Goldsmith Prize

Going Local: Presidential Leadership in the Post-Broadcast Age (Cambridge University Press, 2010) by Jeffrey E. Cohen, professor of political science at Fordham University, was awarded the 2012 Goldsmith prize for the best academic book that “ that best fulfills the objective of improving democratic governance through an examination of the intersection between the media, politics, and public policy.” The Goldsmith book prize is given by the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School at Harvard University.

Autesserre Wins Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order

Séverine Autesserre, assistant professor of political science at Barnard College, Columbia University, won the 2012 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order, the university announced.

Ms. Autesserre is being honored for her analysis of the failure of global efforts to curb violence in the Congo Republic in recent years, which she describes in her 2010 book, The Trouble with the Congo: Local Violence and the Failure of International Peacebuilding (Cambridge University Press). Her research covered the efforts of international workers over a period from 2003 to 2006 to restore peace. They failed, she found, because they neglected the importance of local disputes over land, resources, and political power.

The award jurors said that her message, that lasting conflict resolution must take place from the bottom up as well as from the top down, “holds great promise for the pursuit of peace,” the university said in a statement about the award.

The award for ideas improving world order is one of five Grawemeyer awards given annually. One of this year's prizes, for music composition, was announced in December, and the others, in psychology, education, and religion, will be announced later. The awards were created in 1984 by H. Charles Grawemeyer, a University of Louisville alumnus, and the university presents the awards. One of them, the award in religion, is presented jointly with the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.More information about the awards is available on the foundation's web site.

Solingen to Lead ISA

Etel Solingen, named Chancellor's Professor at the University of California, Irvine in 2010, was voted president-elect of the International Studies Association (ISA). She will assume the role at the 2012 ISA meetings in San Diego. Solingen is recent past-president of the APSA's International History and Politics section.

Lifetime Achievement Award to Michael Zuckert

Michael Zuckert, the Nancy Reeves Dreux Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, has been awarded the 2011 Jack Miller Center (JMC) Chairman's Lifetime Achievement Award for Academic Excellence.

According to the prize committee, the honor recognizes Zuckert's scholarship as well as “his extraordinary ability as a classroom teacher who has provided generations of undergraduates and graduate students a profound understanding of our constitutional heritage.”

Zuckert specializes in political theory; American constitutional law and history; American political thought; and the theoretical, institutional, and legal foundations of the American political system.

Zuckert has been at the University of Notre Dame since 1998 and directs the Tocqueville Program for Inquiry Into Religion and American Public Life in the College of Arts and Letters. He is also the founding editor of the new journal American Political Thought: A Journal of Ideas, Institutions, and Culture (University of Chicago Press), which will publish its first issue in spring 2012.

In announcing the lifetime achievement award, JMC's president, Rear Admiral Mike Ratliff, emphasized that the distinction does not mean Zuckert's greatest accomplishments are behind him.

“Professor Zuckert is at the top of his game, and his future is very exciting,” he says. “He continues to build Notre Dame's program in constitutional studies into one of the most important in the nation.”

Adds Michael Gillespie, Jerry G. and Patricia Crawford Hubbard Professor of Political Science at Duke University, “It is hard to imagine someone better suited to editing this journal or someone whose reputation would add more luster to its masthead. In his hands, I am convinced that American Political Thought will in short order become the preeminent journal in the field.”

Gillespie, who presented an appreciation of Zuckert's work at JMC's Eighth National Summit on Higher Education, says “the comprehensiveness of Michael's intellect is equally obvious in the enormous variety and depth of his scholarship.

AAAS Members Elected as Fellows, Section Officer

In November 2011, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Council elected 539 members as fellows of AAAS. These individuals were recognized for their contributions to science and technology at the Fellows Forum held on February 18, 2012 during the AAAS Annual Meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia. Fellows are elected each year on the basis of “meritorious efforts to advance science and its applications.” The new fellows receive a certificate and a blue and gold rosette as a symbol of their distinguished accomplishments. In the section on social, economic, and political sciences, the following fellows were named:

• Myron P. Gutmann, head, directorate for social, behavioral, and economic sciences, National Science Foundation

• John R. Hibbing, professor of political science, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

• Sally T. Hillsman, executive director, American Sociological Association

• Matthew D. McCubbins, professor of law, Gould School of Law, University of Southern California

• Randolph Roth, professor of history and sociology, Ohio State University

• Richard H. Steckel,professor of economics, Ohio State University

• Paula Stephan, professor of economics, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University.

Also, Arthur “Skip” Lupia, Hal R. Varian Collegiate Professor, University of Michigan, was elected to represent the AAAS section on social, economic, and political science as section chair-elect (2012), chair (2013–14) and past chair (2014–16).

The American Association for the Advancement of Science is an international nonprofit founded in 1848 and dedicated to advancing science around the world. For more information about AAAS, visit www.aaas.org.

Polverari Thesis Wins Award

Laura Polverari was awarded the first prize of the Annual Doctoral Thesis Competition of the European Committee of the Regions. This is a competition for doctoral theses from any EU university focusing on the local and regional dimension of the EU. The first prize consisted of €6,000 plus a certificate. The award was presented on December 14, 2011, during the plenary session of the Committee of the Regions, in Brussels, by the committee's president, Mercedes Bresso.

Since 1996, the Committee has awarded an annual prize for doctoral theses focusing on the local and regional dimension of the EU. This year, the competition received an exceptionally high number of entries from across Europe with 170 doctoral theses being submitted of which 20 were shortlisted. The selection board, chaired by Mr. Marek Woźniak, president of the Polish Delegation to the Committee of the Regions, ultimately selected the five best theses and awarded the first prize to Laura Polverari for her thesis “Uncovering Accountability in Devolved Regional Policy: A Comparative Analysis of the Evolution of European Cohesion Policy Governance and Implementation in Tuscany and Scotland following Devolution.”