Joined the faculty in 1986
Ph.D., Wisconsin
B.A., SUNY Stony Brook
Current scholarly interests:
Postcommunist politics in Eastern Europe (particularly Poland)
Labor and democracy - comparative explorations
Europe and America - the changing relationship
Eastern Europe
Between the United States and the European Union
Globalization protests, and chances for a new international order
Courses Routinely Taught:
Comparative Politics
Globalization and its Discontents
Europe East and West
Russia/China Unraveled
Europe and America
Protests and Social Movements
Radical Thought Left and Right
Recent Publications:
"The Defeat of Solidarity: Anger and Politics in Postcommunist Europe" (Cornell University Press 2005). European Politics in Transition, Fifth Edition (co-author; Houghton-Mifflin, 2005)
Workers After Workers' States: Labor and Politics in Postcommunist Eastern Europe (co-author; Rowman & Littlefield, 2001)
"Letter From Poland" (on Poland's rethinking of its traditional pro-Americanism) - in The Nation, October 4, 2004
"Politics As the Mobilization of Anger," in European Journal of Social Theory 7:2, 2004.
Personal Statement:
It is possibilities and alternatives that I've always been interested in. As a student I learned Russian and Polish, studied in Moscow and then lived in Poland in order to research and write about the historic "Solidarity" movement that took power in 1989. My extensive travels abroad, and my rich contacts with scholars and friends in countries worldwide, allow me to understand much more than Eastern Europe, and directly inform my new research on changing international relations in the context of globalization and American dominance. Since politics is always about what we ought to do in the future, I have much more exploring still to do. We learn good answers only when we ask good questions.