On modeling

The Atlantic’s City Lab blog posted an interview with Josef Konvitz and his comments on modeling and forecasting stuck out to me — Great projects have dynamic effects, precipitating changes throughout urban regions that are all but impossible to model in advance because no one can anticipate their impact. Projects are often sold on the basis […]

On interview techniques

After being found guilty and sentenced to 40 years by the ICTY today, David A. Graham over at The Atlantic’s Notes highlights a 1993 interview conducted with Radovan Karadzic — In January 1993, still relatively early in the Bosnian war, [CBC’s] As It Happens scored an interview with Karadzic. In a retrospective segment years ago, former host Michael Enright […]

On emergency

Held on 5 February, the Foreign Policy program at Brookings hosted the American Academy in Berlin for the 2016 Richard C. Holbrooke Forum focusing on the global refugee crisis. I finally got around to watching the interesting exchange between Leon Wieseltier, Michael Ignatieff, and Martin Indyk. Worth watching for Wieseltier’s brief discussion about emergency; of his current research on […]

On implementing EU-Turkey agreement

Standard Operating Procedures implementing the mechanism for resettlement from Turkey to the EU as set out in the EU-Turkey Statement of 18 March 2016 EU-Turkey refugee deal: staff shortages and rights concerns pose twin threat / Fears grow over refugee safety with EU returns plan set to take effect / Greece insists refugee deportations will […]

On Super Tuesday

A ways back, I was deeply involved in an American student anti-genocide campaign, specifically responsible for education programming. I eventually came to the belief that the organization’s time and energy was best spent educating Americans on global issues, certainly, but to also pay a large amount of attention to issues closer to home. I didn’t have the language […]

On debates re: European burden sharing

17-18.03.2016: European Council Conclusions; UNHCR response 15.03.2016: “Later, this month, [Grandi] will issue an appeal for member states [of the UN] to accept at least 10 percent of Syria’s refugees. That’s 400,000 people who need to be resettled, including about 170,000 whom nations have already promised to take,” UN Refugee Chief: Western Leaders Stir Up […]

On more proposed changes to Norwegian asylum and immigration policy

[05.04.2016 update: tracing the debate of the updated proposal can be found here.] New innvandrings- og integreringsminister Sylvi Listhaug (Frp) put out a 150 page (! document available here) document outlining proposed changes to the Norwegian asylum and immigration policy today, including 40 major + minor changes to laws and regulations. Debate will is scheduled to […]

On webinars: A crisis of refugee protection?

Dr Cathryn Costello and Prof Guy Goodwin-Gil hosted a webinar, ‘Is there a refugee crisis in Europe, or a crisis of lack of refugee protection?‘, on 12.11.15 for OxHRH. The webinar is archived here; also find a list of further readings. (the 1956 Hungarian crisis is specifically addressed starting at 33:00; also, they field a fascinating question about […]

On what the news covers

Max Fisher over at Vox addresses the swirling accusations that the media (at large) ignores certain conflicts for others — It would be easy to blame the media for this, to say that if only media outlets covered Beirut rather than ignoring it, the world might pay attention. I have bad news: The media does […]

On refugees after Paris, et al.

General: The science behind why people fear refugees related: what current debates are really about, “what we’re debating right now is really more about American feelings (our sense of security versus our sense of righteousness) than it is about macro-level solutions to their crisis.” from: Europe’s refugee problems, and ours Our reaction to terrorism is […]