Ruchi Anand

Professor Anton Koslov participated in a conference on the theme: “Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and Security in Central Asia” that took place on October 8th 2020 in Moscow. The conference was organized by the International Center for the Study of Eurasia - ICSE (Paris) and the Institute of the Commonwealth of Independent States (Moscow). The conference was part of a symposium on "Central Asia: Current Challenges”.

Experts from fifteen countries, including Russia, France, the United States, the United Kingdom, Monaco, Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, South Africa, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, met at the Ararat Park Hyatt hotel in Moscow and debated a broad range of topics related to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The participants discussed Chinese economic and social policies in the autonomous region, US strategic approach to China and the role of external forces in Uyghur politics. 

Anton Koslov's paper, entitled “Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and Conflicting Interests of Global Powers,” discussed the history of Uyghur nationalism, Islamism and American foreign policy in the region.

In July and August, Prof. Ruchi Anand will participate in the Junior Statesmen of America summer program at Princeton University, teaching an intensive summer course on International Relations. Dr Anand has taught in the JSA programs since 2001, at Princeton as well as at Georgetown and Stanford.

The JSA programs, which have been in existence for over 80 years, are aimed at outstanding high school students who have a strong interest in government and politics and demonstrate a capability to undertake a program tailored around the lines of an undergraduate seminar. Some of the most notable JSA alumni include former US Secretary of Defense and former Director of the CIA Leon Panetta, former Press Secretary Mike McCurry, and former Attorney General Edwin Meese, among many others.

“Teaching to these young motivated all-rounded students with a passion for international relations in an Ivy League setting is a perfect complement to teaching to slightly older but equally passionate AGS students during the rest of the year. I hope to welcome some of these JSA students at AGS in a few years for their graduate studies – or maybe even before then, for a short study abroad experience in Paris – one of the capitals of world politics!”

More information on the program on the www.jsa.org website

Ruchi Anand authored a chapter in the just released book The World Views of the Obama Era. From Hope to Disillusionment (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). This collective volume edited by former AGS faculty member Matthias Maass examines the Obama presidency from fourteen different national perspectives, offering an accumulative global view of the Obama administration's foreign policies and bilateral affairs.

Entitled “A bilan of Eight Obama Years: Between Bush and Trump”, Ruchi Anand's chapter discusses how France evaluates President Obama’s eight year legacy as POTUS from 2008-2016. It first captures the pulse of France’s media reaction to President Obama over the years, giving the sense of the “Obamania” that started the Obama mandate in 2008. It goes on discuss the Obama Doctrine which sets the philosophical and theoretical frame for Obama’s responses and actions on all his major foreign policy highs and lows with its transnational ally, France. Obama’s grand strategy showed a combination of continuity and change from his predecessor, George Bush. The continuity was evident in the goal of US primacy and leadership and the maintenance of a liberal international order that reflected American values. The change was evident in the means that Obama chose to highlight in achieving his said goals. He employed restraint and diplomacy rather than direct use of military force. The Obama years are separated into the Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande years, each of which saw differences of vision or strategy but not of ultimate goals. What we can see through the Sarkozy and Hollande presidencies is that although there were differences of strategy, there was never a break in the harmony of values between the two countries which continue to show a common vision towards international political affairs and its conduct in the spirit of diplomacy and cooperation. None of the differences highlighted above took away from the essence of cordial and supportive Franco-American relations. The chapter concludes that despite the ups and downs, President Obama is still a favorite in France and Europe. What the future holds under President Trump for Franco-American trans-Atlantic ties is still in flux.

Ruchi Anand lives in France, where she teaches international relations and at the American Graduate School in Paris, and participates every year in the Junior Statesmen of America summer program in the United States, at Stanford, Princeton or Yale, which gives her exposure to and insight into both countries.

This book is a sequel to The World Views of the US Presidential Elections 2008, Ed. Matthias Maas, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), where Anand had authored the chapter entitled “Oh La La: Obamania à la Française”, already giving the French perception of Obama’s historic election and early days in power. There should be another sequel regarding Trump's presidency.

More information on the book on the Palgrave Macmillan website

Professor Elizabeth Milovidov produced a series of video tutorials and a guide for the Council of Europe on the occasion of the 2017 edition of the "European Day of the Protection of children against sexual exploitation and sexual abuse" (18 November).

This third edition focused on the exploitation and abuse "facilitated by information and communication technologies (ICTs)". Milovidov, who teaches the International Public Law course at AGS, is a world expert in children’s rights and child protection, with a particular focus on the specific challenges brought about by the digital age. She has been a Consultant for the COE on these matters for the past five years.

In the six videos, Elizabeth Milovidov provides information and expert advice to COE partners, policy-makers, and professionals working with children. The thematic tutorials focus on:

• Online protection of children

• Online sexual exploitation of children

• Self-generated sexually explicit images and materials involving children (“sexting”)

• “Sex-chatting”

• “Grooming”

• Sexualized images used in revenge.

The 28-page booklet entitled “Parenting in the digital age” is specifically targeted at parents.

"Internet, technology and social media have transformed the way human rights are exercised and violated around the world," said Elizabeth Milovidov. "With the absence of true borders in the digital environment, it is more important than ever that communities, governments and parents join a multi-stakeholder approach to afford protections to internet users and especially the most vulnerable - children.

See more information on the European Day on the Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse 2017

See Elizabeth Milovidov's faculty profile

Professor Ruchi Anand authored a chapter on the hindrance caused by free-market capitalism to environmental justice in the recently released Routledge Handbook of Environmental Justice (edited by Ryan Holifield, Jayajit Chakraborty and Gordon Walker. London, New York : Routledge, 2018).

This edited volume examines pressing issues of environmental justice through contributions by over 90 social scientists, natural scientists, humanists, and scholars from professional disciplines. It looks at these issues from multiple political and cultural perspectives, and proposes new conceptual frameworks and directions for research, policy and practice.

In her chapter entitled “Free-Market Economics, Multinational Corporations and Environmental Justice in a Globalized World”, Ruchi Anand looks at environmental justice as governed and impeded by the economic forces of the free market.

"Environmental justice has always been a passion of mine," says Ruchi Anand. "I wrote this chapter over the holiday break in 2016! The inconclusive conversations between social justice issues and earth issues have to go on to in the face of an uncontrolled threat that Multinational corporations brought to the international system. I am designing an entire class on Environmental justice issues in international relations, which inform all subjects of environmental governance."

Here is a short summary of the chapter authored by Ruchi Anand:

Approximately thirty years after the environmental justice movement took shape in the United States, its theoretical and practical underpinnings have become a rhetorically inherent part of law and policy at the national and international levels.

This chapter forwards the argument that the economic backdrop of globalization and free market capitalism accompanied by an explosion in the number of multinational corporations (MNCs) obstructs the enforcement of environmental justice in powerful ways. Human welfare, justice, and equity concerns are trumped by forces of the market that provide economic rationalizations for all such charges, evading political responsibility. Such a tyranny of the market where all ills are justified in the name of economics is like a cancer of the unleashed free market, which does not stop at state borders but spills over in ways that make questions of international environmental justice pertinent.

Anand explores the bleak potential for the realization of environmental justice goals in the wake of an explosion of multinational corporations that have begun to shape global governance. She argues that neo-liberal capitalism has become the unchallenged custodian of allocating environmental goods and ‘bads’, privileging the logic of the so-called ‘free market’ over any other contender, environmental justice included.

The free market is ‘not-so-free’ after all and has created, maintained and aggravated the gulf between the rich and the poor in the world. The profit motives associated with every conceivable relationship has led to the commodification of sustainable development and environmental justice. The question is whether free-market capitalism can have a soul when its motives are profit or would any such effort be merely what Milton Friedman called a “hypocritical window dressing”?

See The Routledge Handbook of Environmental Justice on the publisher's website

Larry Kilman, who teaches the NGO Management classes at AGS, has been appointed as a specialist consultant to UNESCO on the safety of journalists and the issue of impunity. He will be writing a report on the issue, looking at successful media initiatives that protect journalists and combat the culture of impunity.

The report, to be published in May, will include about 20 case studies from around the globe and will focus on practices that can inspire others and be duplicated in different countries and regions.

Larry Kilman is Assistant Professor of NGO management at the American Graduate School in Paris and Associate Director for Communications for the London-based Institute for Media Strategies. He is the former Secretary-General of the World Association of newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA), where he was responsible for freedom of expression advocacy and development for the global organization representing the world's news media.

Professor Ruchi Anand is featured in a documentary about Donald Trump’s presidency, produced by the French national TV network France 5. This 70-minute film focuses on the reasons and consequences of Trump’s presidency, exploring both the domestic and international issues at stake.

During the two months between Trump’s election and his inauguration, journalist and film director Romain Besnainou travelled to the US to meet with Trump supporters and opponents, and collected expert views from scholars and researchers, probing the deep split in the US population and examining such issues as the economy, security, education, and immigration. Ruchi Anand was asked to comment on the subject of international relations and to analyze the prospects of US foreign policy and diplomacy especially toward China, Russia, and the Israelo-Palestinian relations.

She says: "Donald Trump's victory is a historic watershed that came as a shock to many especially since he lacks the knowledge, experience and biographic paper trail Presidential profile. It became possible owing to domestic disillusionment, i.e. the electorate became tired of intellectual elites and ushered in an era of an illiberal, populist ideological system with unprecedented disdain for organisational structure and norms. I agree with Walt that the Trump victory is, "a social science experiment of historic proportions"! Trump is neither conservative, nor neoconservative, nor is he realist in the real terms, nor idealist, nor isolationist. Without a grand strategy, so to speak, the only 'certainty' with the Trump Presidency is ambiguity and uncertainty, and trying to predict Trump's foreign policy is a rather impossible exercise. With a Jacksonian tendency in his grand strategy, reflected by his stance of economic nationalism and anti-immigration and reeking of a white and Christian identity for the USA, Trump views foreign policy as a zero-sum game like a chessboard rather than a jigsaw puzzle. Although he promises to 'make America great again' many of his moves seem to be unconstitutional and have evoked parallels with Philip Roth's Plot Against America. The Trump victory is a vital sign of the collapse of the post-war liberal consensus, a sort of 'end of the end of history'! One has to wait and watch if institutional safeguards of the US democratic system (and potentially his own administration) will be able to truncate his unleashed power with adequate roadblocks."

Ruchi Anand has developed an expertise on US Foreign Policy for over fifteen years, doing research and teaching at the Junior State of America summer program at Georgetown and Princeton University, and at the American Graduate School in Paris. She is the author of Self-Defense in International Relations (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), where she gives a critical examination of the US war on Iraq and Afghanistan, and just finished writing a chapter evaluating Obama's two mandates from a French perspective, to be published by Palgrage McMillan as part of a collective book gathering various national perspectives on the subject.

Larry Kilman, Assistant Professor of NGO Management, has been appointed as an Associate to the London-based Institute for Media Strategies, which provides news media companies around the world with insights, advice and training.

The Institute is particularly concerned with helping newsrooms manage their digital transformation to ensure they continue to be able to carry out their key role in democratic society, which is to act as a watchdog against corruption and wrongdoing and provide a credible alternative to false news and propaganda.

See more information about the Institute for Media Strategies

Ruchi Anand was invited to write a chapter about the French perspective on Barack Obama’s presidency, to be published by Palgrave Macmillan in a collective book edited by Matthias Maas, gathering various world views on the topic.

This is a sequel to The World Views of the US Presidential Elections 2008, Ed. Matthias Maas, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, where Anand had authored a chapter entitled “Oh La La: Obamania à la Française”, giving the French perception of Obama’s historic election and early days in power. So this new chapter will give a follow up eight years later, as Obama’s presidency is coming to a close.

Dr. Anand will also be active on the teaching front this summer, as she will be a teaching at Princeton University in the JSA (Junior Statesmen Association) program. She has been teaching for the JSA since 2002 at Georgetown, Stanford and Princeton.

This specialized summer program, which has been in existence for 80 years, is specifically designed for outstanding high-school students who are interested in politics, international relations and economics. It includes college-level courses and mock congress debates.

See Ruchi Anand's blog post about her 2015 class.

Professor Ruchi Anand was invited to author a chapter on the international dimensions of environmental justice in the Handbook of Environmental Justice to be published by Routledge in 2017.

The aim of the Handbook of Environmental Justice, in the words of the publisher, is to "make a contribution that no other volume has ever attempted: to provide a comprehensive, critical overview of environmental justice scholarship, covering its history, theory, and methods, along with discussions of current debates, controversies, and questions." Rather than adopting a regional approach, it will address substantive issues and present perspectives from across the world, with an interdisciplinary scope.

Professor Anand's chapter will focus international institutions and policy, as part of the section “Global, regional, and international perspectives.” In her abstract, she writes: "This Chapter aims at providing the theoretical and practical underpinnings of the international dimensions of environmental justice, highlighting distinctive ways in which it has become a rhetorically inherent part of law and policy. The complex intersectionality between at least five perspectives – political, economic, scientific, legal and eco-philosophical - surrounding the issue of environmental justice makes it a challenging definitional task and an impossible mission to find practical and workable solutions to redress the problem. The backdrop of this discussion is the globalization of world politics with the neoliberal agenda dominating trade and economic relations between states." Discussing the key debates and issues, new and old, surrounding the subject, the author will "reignite and fuel the debate to novel ideas", exploring the diversity of actors and issues involved, demonstrating the increasing distance between procedural justice and the most afflicted populations, and "grappling with the question of responsibility (i.e. states, multinational corporations, people) and vulnerability in an attempt to define justice".

The Handbook of Environmental Justice should become an essential resource both for scholars and practitioners of environmental justice. As with other Routledge handbooks, its goal will be "not simply to review the state of the art, but to propose new conceptual frameworks and directions for research, policy, and practice".

Link to Routledge website