Faculty Notes

Friday, 03 February 2012

On 15th December Professor Steve McGiffen gave a talk to an invited group of officials at the European Commission in Brussels, on the subject of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in agriculture. Professor McGiffen was the guest of European Commissioner for Social Affairs László Andor. The author of Biotechnology: Corporate Power versus the Public Interest (Pluto Press, 2006), McGiffen spoke about the political and economic aspects of the issue.

“I’m not a scientist,” he says “but I’m something of a science nut, and in order to explore this subject I have had to learn a lot of biology. However, my focus is on the way in which, in my view, a false consensus has been generated by powerful biotech corporations. This relates to the IR theoretical idea of ‘epistemic communities’, transnational networks of experts who act as advisors to elected and appointed decision-makers. What I believe we have here, and also in for example economic policy, are what I have called co-opted or embedded epistemic communities. Governments are receiving the same advice, and ignoring the views of many scientists who are just as qualified to comment. When I spoke at the Commission, I was able to go beyond theory – which is very important when you get outside academe to the sharp end of politics – and recommend some actual scientists who are critical of the use of GMOs in agriculture.”

Professor McGiffen, who worked at the European Parliament before taking up his post at the American Graduate School in Paris, says that “knowing the European institutional culture helped in being taken seriously. One of the people attending was my counterpart in the conservative group when I was environmental advisor to the left, during which time I worked on the present legislative framework governing the use of GMOs in European agriculture. Despite our political differences we’d got on well, but when he agreed to attend the talk he didn’t realize it was his old sparring partner, so that was a pleasant surprise.”

To request a copy of McGiffen’s talk, youcan contact him on steve.mcgiffen@ags.edu

Tuesday, 31 January 2012

Patrick Clairzier published an article in the latest issue of Routledge's Journal Socialism and Democracy: "Paths to Development through Trade: EU-Led Trade Liberalization vs South–South Cooperation" (2011, Volume 25: Issue 2, pp.64-80).

The article examines the Cariforum-EC Economic Partnership Agreement between the European Commission and CARICOM member states in order to discern the impact of North-South trade agreements on South-South Cooperation initiatives among developing countries.

See more information

Tuesday, 24 January 2012

Professor Douglas Yates just published his fifth book: The Scramble for African Oil: Oppression, Corruption and War for Control of Africa's Natural Resources. The book was released by London’s Pluto Press on January 17^th, 2012.

The Scramble for African Oil demonstrates how the international demand for oil contributes to the chronic political, economic and security problems plaguing Africa. Dougls Yates approches this topic in ten separate discussions, such as the domination by multinational corporations, anti-corruption initiatives by the international community, censorship of journalists and intellectuals, and oppression by praetorian regimes and terror. The book features country case studies including the Congo, Nigeria, Cameroon, Gabon, Angola, Chad, Sao Tome, Equatorial Guinea, and Sudan.

Professor Michael Watts of UC Berkeley says: “Yates brilliantly scales the walls of the oil fortress in Africa and shines a light into the complex politics - local, national and global - of the oil and gas industry and offers some insight into possible routes out of the swamp of failed oil development."

The Scramble for African Oil is also described by Professor Michael Klare of Hampshire College in Massachusetts, author of Resource Wars, as "Essential reading for anyone seeking an understanding of the 'resource curse', the global exploitation of Africa's resources and the troubled state of African politics. Drawing on a detailed knowledge of the region, Douglas Yates does a remarkable job of exposing the predatory forces responsible for the continuing impoverishment of Africa's oil states - while also celebrating those heroic figures who have resisted the onslaught."

For the past twenty years, Professor Yates has been researching, writing, publishing and doing activism on the politics of the international oil industry, and more specifically on the question of oil dependency on the African continent. He has been a consultant for governmental and non-governmental organizations including the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Department of Defense, the Catholic Relief Services, and the British Chatham House, among others.

See more information here

See The Scramble for African Oil on the Pluto Press website

Wednesday, 18 January 2012

Professor Fatemi was invited on China's news TV network CCTV on January 17th to provide his insights on the downgrade by Standard and Poor's of France's credit rating and that of eight other European countries caught up in the Eurozone crisis. Professor Fatemi discussed the significance and possible impact on the world economy of this series of downgrades.

Professor Fatemi regularly appears on CCTV to comment on the international financial news and give his expert view on the EU debt crisis. On December 2nd and December 7th, he had been invited to comment on the proposal by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel to call for a new EU treaty, and on the potential role of the IMF as well as that of the European fiscal policy in helping to resolve the crisis.

View Professor Fatemi's interviews on CCTV:

• January 17th

• December 7th

• December 2nd

Tuesday, 06 December 2011

On November 10, Professor Steve McGiffen attended a conference on climate change at the European Parliament in Brussels, organized by the United Left Group/Nordic Green Left European Parliamentary Group (GUE/NGL) in the run-up to the Conference of Parties to the Kyoto Protocol to be held in Durban, South Africa in December, 2011.

The conference, entitled "A social green revolution; towards and after COP 17" was addressed by, among others, French philosopher Michael Löwy, and European Commissioner László Andor. Professor McGiffen, until 2005 an environmental policy advisor to the GUE/NGL, was there as a guest of Kartika Liotard, MEP, with whom he recently co-authored a book on EU water policy, Poisoned Spring: The EU and Water Privatisation (London: Pluto Press, 2009). Also in attendance was AGS alumna and Academic Coordinator Sarah Pedersen, who is about to start a Ph.D on a closely related subject.

Tuesday, 22 November 2011

On November 16th, Professor Douglas Yates participated in a one-day conference on "Oil, Politics and Africa" organized by Chatham House (the British Royal Institute of International Affairs) and the African Studies Centre at Coventry University (UK). This conference examined current government, NGO and academic thinking on oil and gas production in Sub-Saharan Africa and how oil companies, governments and NGOs can use Africa's oil riches to enhance development and reduce poverty.

Professor Yates's presentation was part of a panel on "Resolving Governance Challenges". Yates focused on solutions to the "oil curse" that affects African and other oil-rich countries, as had been discussed by, among other specialists on the topic, former British Minister of Cooperation Claire Short, Chatham House's Nick Shaxson, Oxfam's Ian Gary, and Ricardo Soares de Oliveira from Oxford University.

"This was a particularly interesting conference because it was policy-oriented, that is it was designed to shape international governance initiatives such as the 'Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative' and 'Publish What You Pay'. The participation of two major actors of the world oil industry, Shell and Tullow Oil, ensured a lively debate. I offered five solutions: combating corruption, investing oil revenues in social development, direct distribution of oil revenues to the people, boycotting african oil, and, finally, stopping our own oil consumption. The last is the only solution that will really work."

See Conference Program

See Chatham House Website and Coventry University's African Studies Centre Website

Tuesday, 15 November 2011

Professor Manlio Graziano, who teaches at AGS and at La Sorbonne in Paris, was interviewed in the Canadian newspaper La Presse on November 8 about Silvio Berlusconi's politics and his government's legacy following the announcement of his resignation. "Berlusconi represents the Italy of comfort and consumption that has been living on credit since the beginning of the 80's", says Professor Graziano.

La Presse was founded in 1884 and is one of the major daily newspapers in Quebec.

See article (in French) in La Presse

Tuesday, 08 November 2011

Professor Regis Bismuth's doctoral dissertation was just published in French by Belgian publisher Bruylant. It is entitled La Coopération Internationale des Autorités de Régulation du Secteur Financier et le Droit International Public (International Cooperation Between Financial Regulatory Authorities and International Public Law)(Brussels: Bruylant 2011) and is part of the publisher's series on Globalization and International Law.

According to Professor Bismuth's book, international cooperation among financial regulatory authorities has developed in response to insufficient control over increasing internationalization of trade in financial services. Occurring outside the customary diplomatic channels, this process seems to be achieved on the fringes of international law. As such, it has barely been the focus of attention of public international lawyers. However, an in-depth analysis shows the relevance of the public international law angle. From an institutional perspective, the cooperation of national regulatory authorities is indeed a genuine interstate phenomenon. Their activity is related to the sovereign activity of their state and the agreements they undertake between them are potentially treaties under international law. They have established permanent fora for cooperation such as the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (B.C.B.S), the International Organization of Securities Commissions (I.O.S.CO.) and the International Association of Insurance Supervisors (I.A.I.S.). The functioning and legal regime of these institutions are similar to those of classic international organizations.

The cooperation of regulatory authorities through the aforementioned new kind of international institutions has also led to spontaneous normative developments. This has resulted in the adoption of common norms – international financial standards – which are meant to be transposed into national legal orders. Although not being public international rules, a multidimensional legalization process of these standards has occurred, unbeknown to their creators, and reflects on the development of new ways of setting and implementing influential international rules.

The analysis is particularly relevant in highlighting novel legal problems arising from the impact, at the international level, of an ill-controlled separation of powers in national legal orders, which result from the rise of independent regulatory authorities.

Professor Bismuth graduated with a doctorate in International Law from Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne and now teaches both at La Sorbonne and at the American Graduate School in Paris.

See book description on the publisher's website

Monday, 07 November 2011

Prof. Nikita Harwich has been accepted as member of the Academia Europaea, a European, non-governmental association acting as an Academy. Founded in 1988 and based in London, its members include leading experts (amongst them, thirty-eight Nobel Prize Laureates, several of whom were elected to the Academia before they received the prize) from the physical sciences and technology, biological sciences and medicine, mathematics, the letters and humanities, social and cognitive sciences, economics and law.

The Academia Europaea’s aim is to promote learning, education and research, through workshops, conferences, meetings and the writing of special reports. Professor Harwich has been asigned to the “History and Archaeology Section”. Some of his historian colleagues in the Academia include Maurice Agulhon, Jean Delumeau, Emmanuel Leroy-Ladurie, Carlo Ginzburg, Sir John Elliott, Theodore Zeldin or Wolfgang Mommsen.

More on the Academia Europaea

Thursday, 20 October 2011

On October 17th, Professor Douglas Yates was interviewed on Bloomberg TV about the nomination of Socialist candidate François Hollande to challenge President and probable candidate Nicolas Sarkozy in the May 2012 French presidential elections.

Professor Yates commented on the significance of this nomination for France and for the rest of the world. He talked about this first-time "American-style" primaries as a "deepening of France's democracy" and remarked on François Hollande as a candidate who, if elected, would be likely to continue the construction of the EU and the Eurozone.

View interview on Bloomberg's website