U.S.

The United States and Mexico are political allies and neighbors with intertwined economies. They both need and at times compete for talent, capital and investments in new technologies. In 2013, the Obama and Peña Nieto administrations launched the High Level Economic Dialogue, a cabinet-level vehicle for deeper engagement on economic issues, and the Bilateral Forum on Higher Education, Innovation and Research, a parallel effort to increase academic and scholarly exchanges between the United States and Mexico. Part of this effort involves cooperation with non-governmental actors to encourage meaningful exchanges among students, faculty and staff from U.S. and Mexican educational institutions at all levels of higher education.

Academic exchanges between countries are critical for robust collaborations in education, research and technological and economic innovation. Regular exchanges and movement of faculty and students back and forth promotes cultural understanding and deeper understandings of each country’s educational and research practices and technologies. Researchers learn about the lines of inquiry that drive innovation in both countries. Over the long term, transnational social and academic networks are strengthened – as has happened before through academic exchanges such as those orchestrated between the United States and Russia and the United States and China.

What are the key challenges and opportunities for leaders trying to strengthen academic ties between the United States and Mexico? Some answers can be found in institutional surveys conducted at Rice University in 2013 and 2014. The results show that, so far, transnational exchanges are hampered by limited communication, inadequate funding, and perceptions of insecurity in Mexico. But important opportunities remain to make progress in the future. more...

President Obama has made a popular promise – to bring American troops home from Afghanistan by the end of 2014. But this exit strategy does not really apply to all U.S. forces, because the plan is to leave behind a large force of private contractors and military advisers. They are supposed to help professionalize Afghanistan’s internal security and police forces, promote stability, and aid in democratic development.

Historically, however, police training programs run by the United States have not achieved such lofty objectives. They have often ended up hindering democratic development and furthering the growth of draconian apparatuses of surveillance and repressive social control. U.S. contractors and advisors have too often propped up coercive client regimes, breeding popular backlash. The same story could well be unfolding once again in Afghanistan. To date, the United States has pumped in over $10 billion to the Afghan police, whose leaders are notorious for corruption and the commission of extralegal abuses. Spending an additional billion for police training, as the Obama administration plans, could end up increasing corruption and repression and intensifying sectarian divisions that make it difficult for Afghanistan to function as a stable democracy. more...

Do Americans care that income gaps between the rich and everyone else are growing by leaps and bounds? When citizens do care, what do they want done about it? Across the political spectrum, debates about these questions have raged with new force since the Occupy Wall Street movement took to the streets in 2011 and the 2012 elections highlighted the issue. To read daily coverage, though, is to hear little more than superficial or partisan assertions. We can do better by tracking public attitudes over many years, which show us both that Americans care about inequality and are very much aware of its negative consequences for all but a sliver at the top. more...