Maryam Z. Deloffre

Where is our collective action on campus gun violence?

by Maryam Z. Deloffre | 2 October, 2015 | Academia

By now the academy is well aware of the latest mass shooting that occurred yesterday at Umpqua Community College in Oregon and claimed ten lives as of reporting this morning. While my social media has exploded with outrage by colleagues, professors, and academics that fear for their safety and the safety of their students, the “academy” has remained silent. I checked the websites of the professional associations that are supposed to advocate for me and my profession—the American Association of University Professors (AAUP); American Political Science Association (APSA); Midwest Political...

Bottom’s Up: Exploring the Resource Mobilization of Local Human Rights Organizations

by Maryam Z. Deloffre | 17 September, 2015 | Human Rights

James Ron, Archana Pandya, and David Crow’s article investigates the resource mobilization of local human rights organizations (LHROs) in India, Mexico, Morocco and Nigeria. Having theorized the transnational networks, strategies, politics and influence of NGOs, Ron, Pandya and Crow now turn the attention of international relations scholars to the local contexts in which NGOs work. Drawing on original data including 263 semi-structured interviews with key informants and LHRO staff in 60 countries as well as public perceptions surveys in each of the four cases (n= 6,180), they find that...

Policymaking Gone Global: Learning to Work with NGOs

by Maryam Z. Deloffre | 10 August, 2015 | Academia, Human Rights

Policy schools prepare students to work in the public policy realm, most often training students for positions in government. But policymaking is an increasingly diverse field, policy issues span the globe and multiple--state and non-state--actors take part in decision-making and policy implementation. How should we teach global policy-making in policy schools? In a recent article co-authored with Cristina M. Balboa, Policymaking in the Global Context: Training Students to Build Effective Strategic Partnerships with Nongovernmental Organizations [ungated access here], we use a case study of...

What’s an expert?

by Maryam Z. Deloffre | 5 August, 2015 | Academia, Gender

Yesterday’s post Confidence and Gender in International Relations got me thinking. The post draws on the excellent survey data from the Teaching, Research, and International Policy (TRIP) project at William and Mary’s Institute for the Theory & Practice of International Relations and notes that in the snap polls conducted by the project over the last year, women international relations scholars choose the response “I don’t know” more often than their male counterparts. They conclude that structural factors such as socialization might explain this “confidence gap” between female and male...

PETA’s Shock Tactics: Irresponsible Advocacy or Strategy and Positioning?-Part 2

by Maryam Z. Deloffre | 31 July, 2015 | Environment & Energy, Human Rights

[As two fellow NGO researchers, Wendy and Maryam are going to collaborate on some posts to provide contrasting views on hot-button issues related to NGOs. Think of us as the Siskel and Ebert of NGOs - we definitely agree on certain things, but clearly not on others (and don’t ask who’s who). Our points of view will not always reflect what we personally think of an issue--we need drama and suspense!--but we will always provide food for thought.] By now everyone is well aware of the recent tragic killing of Cecil the lion by Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer. Josh shared a post about this...

Money Talks: Giving Women a Voice on U.S. Currency

by Maryam Z. Deloffre | 16 July, 2015 | Gender

The grassroots advocacy campaign, Women on 20s, had a simple request: put a woman on the $20 bill by 2020 to commemorate the 100 year anniversary of the 19th amendment, which granted women the right to vote in the United States. Starting with a list of 15 women candidates, on-line voters cast an electronic ballot in the primary round and chose four finalists: Harriet Tubman, Eleanor Roosevelt, Rosa Parks and Wilma Mankiller. One month later, voters elected Harriet Tubman as their choice for the portrait on the twenty dollar bill. As the final votes were pouring in, Senator Jeanne Shaheen...

NGO Power Shift 2.0

by Maryam Z. Deloffre | 30 June, 2015 | Human Rights

In her seminal 1997 article, Power Shift, Jessica Mathews argued that a power shift was underway in international politics marked by a redistribution of power from states to non-state actors—mostly businesses and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Almost two decades later, NGOs are trying to foster a new sort of power shift, this time transferring power from the global north to the global south. This power shift was one of the substantive topics of discussion at the BISA NGO Working Group workshop I wrote about last week. The BOND report and subsequent presentations by academics, Amnesty...

Fostering partnerships between academics and NGOs

by Maryam Z. Deloffre | 23 June, 2015 | Human Rights

Last week, this duck crossed the pond to attend the British International Studies Association (BISA) NGO Working Group workshop on Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) in Global Governance. The workshop convened scholars of NGOs as well as NGO practitioners to consider the practice and changing landscape of global governance as well as the role of NGOs therein. A highlight was an interactive session during which we discussed the recent BOND--the UK membership body for organizations working in international development--report Fast Forward: The Changing Role of UK-based INGOs. The rich...

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