From: Economic and Political Development Concentration
Date: July 10, 2020
Subject: EPD Summer Newsletter #4


Dear current, former, and incoming EPD students,

We hope this finds you staying well at this point in the summer. We know the recent US government announcement on the implications of online study for F-visa holders has created a great deal of stress and uncertainty for our international students. As you know, Columbia is joining other US universities in challenging this action in the US courts, and SIPA is seeking guidance on how best to support our international students going forward, with more information to come.  We are also here to support you. For any visa-related questions, we encourage you to contact the International Students and Scholars Office (https://isso.columbia.edu/). Please also take care of yourselves, and take advantage of the wellness resources available through the Office of University Life (https://universitylife.columbia.edu/). We hope you’ll also find this newsletter informative.

Thinking of you all and wishing you well,
José Antonio, Jenny and Ilona

This Newsletter Includes: 

  • Quick survey for incoming and continuing students
  • EPD Student Summer Spotlight 
  • Faculty Spotlight: Lisa Anderson
  • EPD/OCS Job Strategy Discussion Groups - Upcoming Session on 7/16
  • Upcoming Job and Internship Deadlines
  • Cora Weiss Fellowship for Young Women Peacebuilders - deadline: 7/15
  • Summer OCS Resources
  • Upcoming Free EPD-Related and Other Webinars
  • Zoom recording of EPD alumni panel (7/8)
  • Event recap: Integrating the Sustainable Development Goals
  • ISSO Information
  • EPD Summer Resource List 
  • EPD Summer Office Hours 

Quick Survey for Incoming and Continuing Students
For our incoming and returning students, we realize that your plans for the fall may still be in flux. But please take 4 minutes to fill out this 4-question survey, which will be very helpful to us. Your responses are confidential, and will help our general planning.  You can access the survey here. We'd appreciate if you could respond by Monday, 7/13.

EPD Student Summer Spotlight
Thanks to all the EPD students who responded to our Student Summer Spotlight! Two of your classmates, Carolina Tamayo and Deepti Mani, shared with us what they're up to this summer. Keep the responses coming here.

Carolina Tamayo
Where are you spending the summer: New York City
What are you doing this summer: Interning with the Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration section at the UNHQ, particularly working on a project to engage the private sector in DDR.
What have you done to get along while staying at home?: Cooking and watching TV series.


Deepti Mani
Where are you spending the summer: Jersey City, New Jersey
What are you doing this summer: Interning with KPMG and a Summer Fellowship at the Tamer Center for Social Enterprise at Columbia Business School.
What have you done to get along while staying at home: I started a book club and we are a group of 9 Seeples. That has been bringing me immense joy - we've shortlisted books to read, and once we are done with the reading we get to catch up for a discussion. It has also been a great way to stay in touch with other students and it is something I truly look forward to. 

Faculty Spotlight: Lisa Anderson
Over the summer, we are highlighting some of EPD’s core faculty members! Feel free to explore faculty profiles and the classes that they teach at SIPA.  

Lisa Anderson is the James T. Shotwell Professor Emerita of International Relations at Columbia University, and served as Dean of the School from 1996 to 2008.

In the fall, Professor Anderson plans to teach Authoritarianism: Accountability and Policy-Making in Non-Democratic Settings (INAF U8260), which is one of the core political development courses in the EPD curriculum. The vast majority of human society has been governed by non-democratic regimes. Even today, more than half the world’s people live in autocracies. Many SIPA students come from countries whose governments are not democratic, and will work in the public sector where regimes are not democratic. Yet almost all of the literature of political science on policy-making is devoted to democracy. This course is designed to examine the notion of “authoritarianism” as an analytical concept, explore how we should study policy-making processes in regimes that are stable, enduring, sometimes even dynamic and enlightened, but not democratic, and consider how and when regimes arise from, or develop into, democracies. The course is a heavy reading course and requires considerable class participation; students learn from classic works of American political science, case studies from around the world, and each other as they try to understand the workings of politics in a variety of non-democratic settings, from monarchies to military regimes, non-state actors to imperial powers. 

Professor Anderson is working on a research project on the environment for social science in the Middle East; this is an issue close to her heart, as a social scientist who had worked in the Middle East for much of her career. She very much looks forward to being able to travel again, to join her collaborators in Cairo, Amman, Tunis and elsewhere in the region as we address ways to make social science research better understood and more influential in policy-making in the region.

As she anticipates teaching online in the fall, she is reminded of the emergency management skills required when she was president of the American University in Cairo during the Arab uprisings of 2011-2013: "I believed then, and I believe now, that one of the most important things we can do to address injustice in the world is to equip today's students with skills and perspectives that will empower them to make constructive change. That was my hope as dean at SIPA twenty years ago, as president of AUC ten years ago, and now, as an instructor back
in the classroom."  

OCS Job Strategy Discussion Groups - Upcoming Session on July 16, 2020
For those who were able to join our July 2nd Job Strategy Discussion Group session, we hope you enjoyed our guest speaker, LaRissa Connett of Deloitte, who shared a lot of useful information with us. As a reminder, these bi-weekly concentration-specific job strategy discussion sessions continue throughout the summer and are led by OCS’s Meg Heenehan and Pat Macken. We hope you will plan to join us again in the upcoming July 16th meeting.  

Please mark your calendar for the next EPD session: Thursday, July 16, 2020 at 11AM (ET). 

Zoom Meeting Details: 
https://columbiauniversity.zoom.us/j/92880456005?pwd=ZzBBVFY3cmpBMFdIWEhNcnBlKys0Zz09
Meeting ID: 928 8045 6005
Password: 280585

Upcoming Job and Internship Deadlines 
Search job/internship postings on SIPAlink using the Job ID indicated below. 

  • July 13 - National Endowment for Democracy (NED) | Assistant Program Officer, MENA (26640513)
  • July 13 - National Endowment for Democracy (NED) | Program Officer, Southeast Asia (26640514)
  • July 13 - Adeso | Program Officer - Intern (26644486)
  • July 15 - United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) | Innovative Finance Intern (266321830)
  • July 15 - Google | Communications Manager, News (26640711)
  • July 15 - KPMG | Associate, Global Risk Support Services (26640777)
  • July 15 - World Bank Group | Financial Analyst, India (26642647)
  • July 15 - US International Development Finance Corporation | Business and Industry Specialist (26644762)
  • July 16 - Mercy Corps | Consultant - Nepal Strategic Finance Advisement (26640865)
  • July 16 - World Resources Institute | Research Assistant, Resource Watch (26640920)
  • July 16 - National Endowment For Democracy (NED) | Assistant Program Officer, Africa (26641109)
  • July 16 - National Endowment For Democracy (NED) | Program Officer / Assistant Program Officer Southeast Europe (26641090)
  • July 17 - International Rescue Committee (IRC) | Programme Development Advisor (26641184)
  • July 17 - Credit Suisse | Environmental & Social Risk Management Specialist (26641423)
  • July 17 - Asian Development Bank (ADB) | Global Real Estate Management Specialist (26644939)
  • July 18 - Office of Diversity and Inclusion, U.S. House of Representatives | Research and Data Analyst (26641489)
  • July 18 - Guidehouse LLP | Consultant - Global Investigations and Compliance (26641597)
  • July 18 - Ernst & Young (EY) | Business Analyst, Transaction Advisory Services (26641665)
  • July 22 - Foreign Policy Magazine | Policy Fellow (26642161)
  • July 23 - Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) | Economic Analyst (26642302)
     

Cora Weiss Fellowship for Young Women Peacebuilders
The Global Network of Women Peacebuilders (GNWP) is pleased to announce its fifth annual Cora Weiss Fellowship for Young Women Peacebuilders. Launched in 2015, the Fellowship aims to support the development of young women peacebuilders and ensure that more young people share Cora’s vision for sustainable peace and gender equality as strong and integral parts of our global culture. The Fellowship provides a young woman with the opportunities and platforms to elevate the concerns and priorities of women and girls in their country in global policy discussions at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City.

For more information on requirements and how to apply, read more here. The deadline for application is July 15th, 2020. 

Summer OCS Resources 
OCS continues to work diligently this summer to provide resources to all students. Please see below for more information on important OCS resources that you can take advantage of to accelerate your internship or job search or to help with interviews, networking, and finding alumni contacts. 

OCS Virtual Office Hours: 
Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 10-11am EST
Join Zoom Meeting
Meeting ID: 990 6200 1305
Password: 195025

Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3-4pm EST
Join Zoom Meeting
Meeting ID: 922 1262 1970
Password: 960599

OCS Quick Links: 
Big Interview - Virtual interview practice
Online Subscriptions and Databases
SIPA Alumni and Student Network on LinkedIn
VMock - AI resume review tool
"Look Who's Hiring" - Interactive job posting report 
 
Recordings of Previous OCS events:
Career Workshops and Webinars
Employer Information Sessions 

Upcoming Free EPD-Related and Other Webinars 
Looking for some webinars to stay engaged with the latest on Economic and Political Development? Below are some interesting (and free!) webinars that you can sign up for to learn the latest on EPD-related matters around the world. 

July 7-17: 2020 High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development 
The United Nations is hosting the 2020 High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) online this year, from July 7th through July 17th. A major theme this year is the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on countries' progress in implementing the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals. The program of plenary sessions, voluntary national reviews and side-events (including registration links for many of the side-events) is at https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/hlpf/2020#programme. The informal plenary meetings of the HLPF and high-level sessions will be webcast at http://webtv.un.org/.  

July 15: China in the WTO: Current issues and prospects for reform
Part of the Peterson Institute of International Economics (PIIE) Trade Winds series. The World Trade Organization (WTO) has been instrumental to China's trade rise, providing a framework for greater certainty, stability, and increased market openness. China has become, in its own right, an active and influential player in the organization. But the WTO is facing an existential crisis. Where does China stand on the WTO's state of play? How does China view WTO reform and how could it contribute to strengthen global trade cooperation? Is China ready to help save the WTO? Register here: https://www.piie.com/events/china-wto-current-issues-and-prospects-reform

July 16: Data for a decade of action: A conversation with Francesca Perucci and Jeffrey Sachs (9AM EST)
During an exclusive, virtual Newsmaker event co-hosted by Devex and SDSN TReNDS, attendees will hear directly from two global development leaders — SDSN President Jeffrey Sachs and Francesca Perucci, chief of the Development Data and Outreach Branch at the United Nations Statistics Division — as they address the urgent need to redouble efforts on the SDGs and the role that data can play in not only tracking progress on the goals, but also ensuring urgent action where it is needed most. Register here: https://pages.devex.com/data-for-a-decade-of-action.html#WELCOME

July 17: Conversations on COVID-19 and Development: Susanna Moorehead
CGD Conversations on COVID-19 and Development: In this series, CGD President Masood Ahmed discusses the economic and development challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic with policymakers and thought-leaders in the development community. Chair of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Development Assistance Committee, Susanna Moorehead, joins CGD President Masood Ahmed and CGD Executive Vice President Amanda Glassman to discuss development cooperation in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, building back better, and the reliability of official development assistance (ODA) in times of crisis. Register here: https://www.cgdev.org/event/conversations-covid-19-and-development-susanna-moorehead

Zoom Recording of EPD Alumni Panel 
On July 8th, EPD hosted four EPD alumni, Marcos Paya (MIA '17), Rebecca Saxton-Fox (MPA '13), Ben Roseth (MIA '11) and Jenny Perlman Robinson (MIA '01), for a conversation about their current positions, their career paths and how their respective organizations are responding to the current COVID-19 pandemic. Students interested in connecting with these alumni are encouraged to reach out through LinkedIn. For those who missed the session or would like to review it again can access the recording here. 

Event recap: Integrating the Sustainable Development Goals
The IO/UN Specialization and the EPD Concentration would like to thank those who attended the "Integrating the Sustainable Development Goals" webinar last week with Haoliang Xu, MIA '94, UN Assistant Secretary-General and Director of UNDP's Bureau for Policy and Programme Support.

Mr. Xu shed light on the interconnected and systems thinking approach to interna6tional development and the integration of the 17 SDGs. Universality, integration, "leaving no one behind," having a multi-stakeholder approach, and risk-informed development were at the forefront of his message on integration. Mr. Xu stressed that one SDG goal cannot be achieved alone and that integration is a UNDP mandate that must be achieved. Integrated policy and programming, data and analytics, financing, and design thinking should all be included in order to integrate the SDGs more effectively.

Those who missed the talk can:

  • Watch the video recording here
  • Consult Haoliang Xu's presentation, or  
  • Visit UNDP's website to learn more about SDG integration. 

ISSO Information 
For our international students, the Columbia International Students and Scholars Office provides information and assistance about relevant visa and travel information. The ISSO’s website is https://isso.columbia.edu/. 



Among others, ISSO offers the following help and services: 
ISSO’s Covid Hub can be found here: https://isso.columbia.edu/content/covid-19-hub. 
Immigration Alerts and Resources: https://isso.columbia.edu/content/immigration-alerts-and-resources  

EPD Summer Resource List
The EPD team has assembled a list of recommended resources for those looking to keep up with the latest developments and major thought in international development including organizational responses to COVID-19 pandemic. You can access the list here.  

Summer EPD Office Hours
The EPD team will continue to be available to chat with students throughout the summer. Please email us to schedule an appointment and we'll set up a call for you. 

José Antonio Ocampo, EPD Co-Director
jao2128@columbia.edu
 
Jenny McGill, EPD Co-Director and Workshop Director
em419@columbia.edu
 
Ilona Vinklerova, EPD Concentration Manager
iv2105@columbia.edu

That's all for now! Enjoy the warm weather!