BUIAA Hosts Panel Featuring Pardee School Professors

The Boston University International Affairs Organization (BUIAA) hosted a panel discussion featuring several Pardee School faculty members that focused on United States foreign policy toward Latin America.

The panel discussion, entitled “Professor Perspectives: US Intervention in Latin America,” featured Joseph Wippl, Professor of the Practice of International Relations at the Pardee School, Julie Klinger, Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Pardee School, and Joshua Shifrinson, Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Pardee School. The event was hosted in conjunction with the College of Arts and Sciences Office of Student Programs and Leadership as part of the “Professor Perspectives” series.

The discussion covered a wide range of topics including the history of the intelligence relationship between the U.S and Latin America and the recent election of Jair Bolsonaro as President of Brazil.

From the text of a November 19, 2018 article in The Daily Free Press entitled “BU International Affairs Association Examines US-Latin America Political Past:”

Global attention turned to Latin and South American politics following Brazil’s October elections which resulted in the appointment of far-right President-Elect Jair Bolsonaro. As experts analyzed how Bolsonaro would influence international politics, the Boston University International Affairs Association organized a panel Wednesday to explore the history of U.S.-Latin American policies.

The panel, entitled “US Intervention in Latin America- Aiding or Debilitating?” was held by the BUIAA in conjunction with the Office of Student Programs and Leadership as part of the “Professor Perspectives” series.

Initiated by the Office of Student Programs and Leadership, “Professor Perspectives” holds panels a couple times a semester that feature professors on campus and offer students “candid conversations” outside of classrooms, according to Kirstin Buchanan, a senior in the Pardee School of Global Studies who works in the Office of Student Programs and Leadership.

You can read the entire article here.

Wippl is a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer. He spent a 30 year career as an operations officer in the National Clandestine Service (NCS). Wippl has served overseas as an operations officer and operations manager in Bonn, West Germany; Guatemala City; Luxembourg; Madrid, Spain; Mexico City; Vienna, Austria; and Berlin, Germany.

Julie Michelle Klinger, PhD, specializes in development, environment, and security politics in Latin America and China in comparative and global perspective. Her recent book Rare Earth Frontiers: From Terrestrial Subsoils to Lunar Landscapes (Cornell University Press in Fall 2017) received the 2017 Meridian Award from the American Association of Geographers for its “unusually important contribution to advancing the art and science of geography.”

Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson’s teaching and research interests focus on the intersection of international security and diplomatic history, particularly the rise and fall of great powers and the origins of grand strategy.  He has special expertise in great power politics since 1945 and U.S. engagement in Europe and Asia. Shifrinson’s first book, Rising Titans, Falling Giants: How Great Powers Exploit Power Shifts (Cornell University Press, 2018) builds on extensive archival research focused on U.S. and Soviet foreign policy after 1945 to explain why some rising states challenge and prey upon declining great powers, while others seek to support and cooperate with declining states.