A second-round conference on “sustainable diplomacy” recently analyzed efforts to produce a more viable diplomatic system – even as the changing global security landscape places new pressures on it. Keele University Professor Costas Constantinou, a co-convener of the day-long event at Watson, pointed to long-running dissatisfaction with the current system’s inability to resolve pressing global issues. Diplomacy must transform itself to remain viable, added fellow convener James Der Derian, director of the Watson Institute’s Global Security Program. Der Derian identified terrorism, instantaneous media, and other new challenges to traditional diplomacy, in a world where globally networked non-state actors practice diplomacy as well as a growing number of increasingly powerful nations.

Read More | posted 7.18.08

David Kennedy ’76, Brown University’s vice president for international affairs, today becomes interim director of the Watson Institute. Kennedy will promote a deeper engagement of the Institute with Brown’s undergraduate and graduate programs in the international arena. “I expect to work closely with the Institute faculty and Board and with colleagues elsewhere at Brown to shape a strategic plan for the Institute which will make the Watson Institute an integral part of the University’s international agenda and an even more prominent contributor to the most important contemporary scholarly and policy issues in the international arena,” Kennedy said.

Read More | posted 7.1.08

A short film by Watson Adjunct Associate Professor Saleem H. Ali and his collaborators documents research findings from Fiji, where the closing of a gold mine provides lessons on the downside of development strategies based on non-renewable natural resources. Tropical Gold: Reversal of Fortune in Fiji is available on a website filled with related survey results, environmental data, news, and other resources. The story of the Vatukoula gold mine, one of the longest-running in the Asia-Pacific, is available here.

Read More | posted 7.1.08

Brazil’s former First Lady Ruth Cardoso died at home in São Paulo on Tuesday at the age of 77. She was an anthropologist and visiting professor at the Watson Institute, where former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso has also been in residence during each of the past five years as a Brown University professor at large.

Read More | posted 6.27.08

On the eve of what is being called a sham election in Zimbabwe, International Writers Project Fellow Chenjerai Hove gave his view of the situation as a Zimbabwean exile on the Charlie Rose Show last night. Hove called for sanctions against his country to topple the government of President Robert Mugabe and for an intervention force of peacekeepers to stop the current wave of violence.

Read More | posted 6.26.08