Politics

In 2014, President Barack Obama took a big step to normalize relations with Cuba. Less than two years later, his successor announced a rollback of many of those policies.

The nation turned its attention to Washington on June 8 as James Comey testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee, providing greater detail about President Trump’s conversations with the former FBI director regarding the inquiry into former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn’s ties with Russian officials.

Richard K. Betts, the Arnold A. Saltzman Professor of War and Peace Studies in the political science department, is widely known as an expert on U.S. foreign relations and national security. He is director of Columbia’s Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies and the international security policy program at the School of International and Public Affairs.

Columbia University announced that outgoing Secretary of the Treasury Jacob “Jack” Lew would be joining its School of International and Public Affairs faculty as a visiting professor in February. He will lecture, teach graduate students, and work with faculty members at the school and across the University on the subjects of international economics, fiscal and trade policy, and a range of other public policy issues.

With the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, race has become a defining issue in this election year, and mobilizing the African American vote will be the key to winning the presidency, says Fred Harris.

Who will turn out to vote on November 8? Rodolfo de la Garza, Eaton Professor of Administrative Law and Municipal Science and Professor of International and Public Affairs, has insight into a key block of voters: Latinos. De la Garza directs Columbia’s Project on Immigration, Ethnicity, and Race and is vice-president of the Tomás Rivera Policy Institute at the University of Southern California. He’s currently studying the states in which Latino voters may have the biggest impact in the upcoming election.

Politicians have been talking about the need for tax reform for decades and this year’s presidential campaign is no exception. Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump both say changes are needed, but it should come as no surprise that their proposals are very different.

Fifteen years after terrorists attacked the World Trade Center, rebuilding the area known as Ground Zero is almost complete. Reflecting pools in the memorial plaza mirror the new One World Trade Center, which rises a symbolic 1,776 feet. There is also a museum and a transportation hub designed to look like a bird in flight.