Weeks Fulbright; IR publications from Schubert, Pollak, Barnidge

Recent news and professional achievements by Webster University community members include:

Weeks Completes Fulbright in Russia

Edythe Weeks, adjunct faculty member in the College of Arts & Sciences, completed a Fulbright Specialists appointment in the Omsk region of Siberia, Russia at Omsk F.M. Dostoevsky State University (Омский государственный университет им. Ф.М. Достоевского). Weeks completed this appointment in October and November 2015. She is one of over 400 U.S. faculty and professionals who traveled abroad in 2015 through the program.

The main purpose of the project involved incorporating global perspectives into teaching, learning, and research; helping to further international, intercultural competencies among students, faculty, and staff; adding additional enrichment to the university’s intellectual, research endeavors and international projection; and increasing mutual understanding, between the people of the Russian Federation and the people of the United States by sharing educational and cultural experiences. 

The scholarly areas of expertise and topics Weeks shared included U.S. Race and Ethnic Relations, International Relations and Space Law-Outer Space Development. She also lectured to International Business Program students for three weeks on career development and enhancement strategies for the international marketplace. She was a guest speaker in the daily English Language and Translation courses and was a guest speaker in the Department of Economics ongoing Business English Model program. 

Schubert, Pollak Publish EU Energy Policy Book

Webster Vienna international relations professors Samuel Schubert and Johannes Pollak have published "Energy Policy of the European Union," co-authored with Maren Kreuter of the Institute for Advanced Studies and University of Bochum. 

The text systematically addresses how the EU's energy agenda influences contemporary developments in energy politics, by analyzing the European Union's regional and external energy policy. It reveals the struggle by its now twenty-eight member states to integrate national energy markets and to navigate international energy politics at the same time as responding to changing environmental norms.  

Learn more in this story at Webster Vienna.

Barnidge Publishes Research on Palestine

Robert P. Barnidge, Jr., lecturer and coordinator of International Relations in the College of Arts & Sciences, has published his second research monograph, Self-Determination, Statehood, and the Law of Negotiation: The Case of Palestine, with Bloomsbury. 

A brief description:

"From the Madrid Invitation in 1991 to the introduction of the Oslo process in 1993 to the present, a negotiated settlement has remained the dominant leitmotiv of peacemaking between Israel and the Palestinian people. That the parties have chosen negotiations means that either side’s failure to comply with its obligation to negotiate can result in an internationally wrongful act and, in response, countermeasures and other responses. 

Barnidge's monograph seeks to advance our understanding of the international law of negotiation and use this as a framework for assessing the Israeli–Palestinian dispute, with the Palestinian people’s unsuccessful attempt to join the United Nations as a Member State in autumn 2011 and the successful attempt to join the same institution as a non-Member Observer State in November 2012 providing a case study. 

The legal consequences of these applications are not merely of historical interest; they inform the present rights and obligations of Israel and the Palestinian people. This work fills a significant gap in the existing international law scholarship on the Israeli–Palestinian dispute, which neither engages with this means of dispute settlement generally nor does so specifically within the context of the Palestinian people’s engagements with international institutions."