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At the end of October 2024, Israel’s parliament voted to ban the UN's Palestinian refugee agency (Unrwa) from operating within Israel and occupied East Jerusalem. While most of Unrwa's projects take place in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, it relies on agreements with Israel to operate. Thus, on a practical level, the ban on interacting with Israeli officials means it is now almost impossible for the agency's staff to operate effectively. Joining the show to discuss the Unrwa ban and the broader issues of when, why, and how states obstruct Humanitarian Assistance is Dr. William Plowright, an Assistant Professor of International Security at the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University, where he teaches on the MSc Conflict Prevention and Peacebuilding and MSc Defence, Development and Diplomacy. Before joining Durham Will spent nearly a decade working in operational management in the humanitarian sector, for Doctors Without Borders / Medecins Sans Frontieres, in various countries and situations of armed conflict, mass displacement, detention, and disease outbreaks. He has just published a new book entitled “War on Rescue: The Obstruction of Humanitarian Assistance in the European Migration Crisis”, where he describes, analyses, and explains why and how governments block assistance to people in times of crisis. To learn more about our guest, Dr. Will Plowright, see his website at https://www.durham.ac.uk/staff/william-plowright/

More information on Dr. Will Plowright's book "War on Rescue: The Obstruction of Humanitarian Assistance in the European Migration Crisis”, can be found at https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501778353/the-war-on-rescue

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On the 12th of November 2024, President Trump announced that “the Great Elon Musk, working in conjunction with American Patriot Vivek Ramaswamy, will lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Together, these wonderful Americans will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies - essential to the “Save America” Movement.” On the show this week to discuss what reforms for efficiency gains are, what Musk and Ramaswamy might target, and what institutional hurdles they might face is my colleague Dr. Aung Hein, an Assistant Professor of Public Policy in the School of Government and International Affairs, and a core member of staff on our new MSc Public Policy starting next academic year. His research interests include state capacity, public bureaucracy, and civil service reforms. Before joining Durham, he led a policy research programme advising two successive Myanmar civilian governments.

To learn more about Dr. Aung Hein and his research visit https://www.durham.ac.uk/departments/academic/school-government-international-affairs/about-us/news/meet-assistant-professor-aung-hein/

To learn more about the MSc Public Policy at Durham's School of Government and International Affairs visit https://www.durham.ac.uk/public-policy

Relevant Literature:

Bevan G. and C. Hood 2006. What's Measured is What Matters: Targets and Gaming in the English Public Health Care System. Public Administration 84, 517-538.

Burgess S. and M. Ratto 2003. The Role of Incentives in the Public Sector: Issues and Evidence. Oxford Review of Public Policy 19, 285-300.

Finan, F. , B. A. Olken, and R. Pande 2015. Personnel Economics of the State. Cambridge: Bureau of Economic Research.

Hood C. 1991. A Public Management for All Seasons? Public Administration 69: 3-19.

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The 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference or Conference of Parties (COP) at Baku in Azerbaijan closed at the end of November 2024. The COP aims to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, emphasising the urgent need for investment in climate action. The COP29 Presidency also stresses the importance of operationalising the Loss and Damage Fund to support vulnerable communities, especially Small Island Developing States. Joining this episode to evaluate the COP29 and put it into a broader perspective in relationship to the global political economy, livelihoods, and politics is my colleague Dr. Maria Eugenia Giraudo, an Assistant Professor of International Political Economy. Her research explores developing states’ capacities to govern the uneven geographies of capital that emerge during commodity booms and critically analyses the policy frameworks states employ.

To learn more about Dr. Eugenia Giraudo's work visit her website at: https://www.durham.ac.uk/staff/maria-e-giraudo/

Literature mentioned in the episode:

Jarvis, A., and Forster, P.M. 2024. Estimated human-induced warming from a linear temperature and atmospheric CO2 relationship, Nature Geoscience. Open Access via: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-024-01580-5.

Daniela Gabor 2022. The Wall Street Consensus at COP27: https://www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/the-wall-street-consensus-at-cop27/ [Last accessed: 22nd November 2024].

Jessica Green 2021. Follow the Money: ⁠https://www.foreignaffairs.com/world/follow-money ⁠[Last accessed: 22nd November 2024].

Jessica Green 2023 The False Promise of Carbon Offsets: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/world/false-promise-carbon-offsets [Last accessed: 22nd November 2024]. Music: The Good News by SHANTI from https://tunetank.com/track/263-the-good-news/

This episode looks at a brutal Sudanese civil war, which started in April 2023 and so far has displaced over 8 million people and caused tens of thousands of deaths., but has been happening largely outside the global media spotlight. The conversation with Dr. Will Plowright, an Assistant Professor of International Security in the School of Government and International Affairs, summarizes Sudan’s recent history, highlights the factors contributing to the outbreak of the civil war, and describes the humanitarian situation. Will is an expert on intra-state armed conflict and has before his academic career worked for almost a decade in the Humanitarian sector for Medicine Sans Frontiers (Doctors Without Borders) in various sub-Saharan African countries, the Middle East and Sudan. The conversation was initially recorded in February 2024, but the introduction has been updated with the latest figures.

To learn more about our guest, Dr. Will Plowright, see his website at https://www.durham.ac.uk/staff/william-plowright/

For the most recent information on the Humanitarian situation on the ground see the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance (UNOCHA) website on the Sudanese civil war at https://reports.unocha.org/en/country/sudan/ [Last accessed: 16.11.2024].

Earlier in October CHOGM, the Commonwealth Head of Government Meeting, took place in Samoa, where Caribbean leaders succeeded in including a call for reparatory justice regarding the trans-Atlantic trade in enslaved Africans and chattel enslavement in the Leader Statement (point 22, page 8) despite the UK government's objection. In this episode Dr. Elizabeth Kahn, an Associate Professor of Political Theory researching injustices and moral dilemmas, looks more closely at the concepts of historical injustice, reparations, and colonialism and what case can be made for reparations from a philosophical perspective.

To learn more about our guest, visit Elizabeth Kahn's website: https://www.durham.ac.uk/staff/elizabeth-kahn/

The CHOGM Leader Statement can be found here: https://thecommonwealth.org/news/chogm2024/Samoa-communique-leaders-statement-and-declarations

Literature discussed in this episode:

Amighetti, Sara. and Nuti, Alasia 2015. Towards a Shared Redress. Journal of Political Philosophy, 23: 385-405.

Bhargava, R. 2013. Overcoming the Epistemic Injustice of Colonialism. Global Policy, 4: 413-417.

Butt, Daniel 2007. “On Benefiting from Injustice.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 37(1): 129–52.

Butt, Daniel 2008 Rectifying International Injustice: Principles of Compensation and Restitution Between Nations Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Butt, Daniell 2012. Repairing Historical Wrongs and the End of Empire. Social & Legal Studies, 21(2), 227-242.

Lu, Catherine 2011. Colonialism as Structural Injustice: Historical Responsibility and Contemporary Redress. Journal of Political Philosophy, 19: 261-281.

Lu Catherine 2017. Justice and Reconciliation in World Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

McKeown, Maeve 2021. Backward-looking reparations and structural injustice. Contemporary Political Theory 20, 771–794.

Nuti Alasia 2019. Injustice and the Reproduction of History: Structural Inequalities, Gender and Redress. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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After months of primaries, a late change candidacy, blockbuster conventions, two assassination attempts, and hundreds of rallies nationwide, US citizens will finally be heading to the polls this Tuesday. To reflect on the 2024 race to the White House and put it into context by comparing it to presidential elections in the recent past, we assembled SGIA’s US Politics trio Dr. Tessa Ditonto, Associate Professor of Gender & Politics, Dr. David Andersen, Associate Professor of US Politics, and Dr. Neil Visalvanich, Associate Professor of Political Science to unpack what changed and what remained the same in this campaign compared to past presidential races.

To learn more about our guests, visit their websites:

Dr. Tessa Ditonto: https://www.durham.ac.uk/staff/tessa-m-ditonto/

Dr. David Andersen: https://www.durham.ac.uk/staff/david-j-andersen/

Dr. Neil Visalvanich: https://www.durham.ac.uk/staff/neil-visalvanich/

The link for Durham University staff and students to sign-up for our Chancellor in Conversation event is: https://pay.durham.ac.uk/event-durham/chancellor-in-conversation#:~:text=Staff%20and%20students%20are%20invited,pm%20in%20Mount%20Oswald%20Hub.

Links to information and further reading on the topics covered in this episode:

- Burn-Murdoch, J 2024. Will Trumpism Outlast Trump: the changed political and cultural landscape makes a rest unlikely. The Financial Times 1st November 2024 https://www.ft.com/content/3ce7ceef-9135-45ab-a4f5-412ee5037da2 {Last accessed: 1st November 2024].

- Campbell, W. J. (2022). Misfires and Surprises: Polling Embarrassments in Recent U.S. Presidential Elections. American Behavioral Scientist, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/00027642221118901.

- Cassese, E.C. and Barnes, T.D., 2019. Reconciling sexism and women’s support for Republican candidates: A look at gender, class, and whiteness in the 2012 and 2016 presidential races. Political Behavior, 41, 677-700.

- Ditonto, T., 2017. A high bar or a double standard? Gender, competence, and information in political campaigns. Political Behavior, 39, 301-325.

- Eagly, A.H. and Karau, S.J., 2002. Role congruity theory of prejudice toward female leaders. Psychological Review, 109(3), 573.

- Jennings W, Wlezien C. 2018. Election polling errors across time and space. Nature Human Behaviour 2(4):276-283. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-018-0315-6.

- Junn J, Masuoka N. 2020. The Gender Gap Is a Race Gap: Women Voters in US Presidential Elections. Perspectives on Politics 18(4):1135-1145. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592719003876

- Lake, C. and A. Iovino 2024. A Democratic and a Republican Pollster Agree: This Is the Fault Line That Decides the Election. The New York Times 30th October 2024: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/10/30/opinion/gender-education-gap.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare [Last accessed: 1st. November 2024].

- Sommer, U. and I. Franco 2022. Trump’s African Americans? Racial resentment and Black support for Trump in the 2020 elections. Politics, Groups and Identities 12(4), 921-947. https://doi.org/10.1080/21565503.2023.2265899

- Sommer, U. and I. Franco 2024. Solidarity in question: activation of dormant political dispositions and Latino support for Trump in 2020. European Political Science Review 16(3), 351-377. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1755773923000371

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Tackling obesity has been on the UK’s public health agenda for quite some time. Recently weeks received prominence via the government's announcement that it is looking into whether the new weight-loss drugs could be used to reduce unemployment for obesity-related reasons. Joining the show to discuss obesity policy more broadly and Labour's "jabs for job" announcement is Dr. Renu Singh, an Assistant Professor of Public Policy at SGIA. Her research focuses on public health and she is finishing a book manuscript on the topic. She is also the Programme Director of our new MSc Public Policy.

To learn more about Renu and her research, visit her website: https://www.durham.ac.uk/staff/renu-singh/

To learn more about SGIA's new MSc Public Policy visit: https://www.durham.ac.uk/public-policy

For background information on this topic see:

- Unemployed could get weight loss jabs to return to work. BBC News. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjd54zd0ezjo [Last accessed: 26.10.2024].

- Weight loss jabs for jobless not dystopian - Streeting. BBC News. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgk7l30egjeo [Last accessed: 26.10.2024].

- What are weightloss jabs and how do they work? BBC News. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/clyz9xzr0d4o [Last accessed: 26.10.2024].

- Why weight-loss drugs may be no obesity silver bullet. BBC News. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czxgqp1nd1jo [Last accessed: 26.10.2024].

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