New Faculty 2014-15

Each year SIPA welcomes new scholars and practitioners to its faculty. Among those joining in 2014-15 are renowned economists, a former foreign minister of Mexico, a former U.S. ambassador to Mexico and Ukraine, and experts in cybersecurity and technology – a remarkable group, each of whom will enrich SIPA’s diverse and expert community.

Multi-Year Appointments                   

Takatoshi Ito will join the faculty as a professor of international and public affairs in January. An internationally renowned economist, Ito is an expert on international finance, macroeconomics, and the Japanese economy who served from 2006 to 2008 as a member of the Prime Minister’s Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy. He also held senior positions in the Japanese Ministry of Finance and at the International Monetary Fund. Ito served as dean of the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Public Policy for the past two years and as professor at Japan’s National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies. He has served as a visiting professor at both Columbia and Harvard and taught at other institutions. He earned his PhD in economics at Harvard University.

Andrés Velasco, a professor of professional practice in international development, is an internationally recognized scholar of economic development, international economics, and the political economy and has written recently on the causes of financial crises in emerging markets. From 2006 to 2010, Velasco served as finance minister of Chile under President Michelle Bachelet. He was the Sumitomo-FASID Professor of International Finance and Development at Harvard Kennedy School from 2000 to 2011 and previously was a tenured member of the economics faculty at New York University and directed the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies there. In 2011-2012, Velasco served as the Edward Larocque Tinker Visiting Professor at SIPA and the Institute for Latin American Studies. He holds a PhD in economics from Columbia.

Doru Cojoc, a new lecturer, is teaching the core class Quantitative Analysis for International and Public Affairs and will teach an advanced course in applied econometrics in the spring. Cojoc studies microeconomic theory, experimental economics, and public finance, focusing his research in part on strategic communication and dishonest behavior. He previously served six years as a lecturer at Stanford University and at the University of Iowa. Cojoc earned his PhD in economics at Clemson University.

Visiting and Distinguished Adjunct Appointments

Jorge Castañeda, the George Ball Adjunct Professor for Fall 2014, served as foreign minister of Mexico from 2000 to 2003. In 2006 he attempted to run for Mexico’s presidency as an independent candidate, but the Mexican Supreme Court ruled against his eligibility. Castañeda is a renowned public intellectual, political scientist, and prolific writer with an interest in Mexican and Latin American politics, comparative politics, and U.S.-Mexican and U.S.-Latin American relations. He taught for more than 25 years at Mexico’s National Autonomous University and has also taught at Princeton, Berkeley, and NYU, where he remains a Global Distinguished Professor of Politics and Latin American and Caribbean Studies. Castañeda holds a PhD in economic history from the University of Paris-I (Pantheon-Sorbonne). At SIPA he is leading a seminar on the changing nature of the political left in Latin America.

Andrew Bacevich will serve as Columbia University’s first George S. McGovern Visiting Professor. A specialist in 20th-century U. S. diplomatic and military history, Bacevich is professor emeritus at Boston University, where he taught from 1998 to 2014. A graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, he received his PhD from Princeton. He is author of the best-selling Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War (2010) and, most recently, Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country (2013). In Fall 2014 he will teach a course examining the ideas that underpin U.S. foreign policy.

Leon G. Billings, adjunct professor of international and public affairs, was the staff director of the Senate Subcommittee on Environmental Pollution from 1966 to 1978, a role in which he served as principal majority staff author of the Clean Air Act. Billings went on to work as chief of staff to Senator and then Secretary of State Edmund S. Muskie. He served in the Maryland General Assembly from 1991 to 2002. Billings has lectured extensively on environmental law and American politics and held an adjunct professor at the University of Southern California for many years. His company, Leon G. Billings LLC, advises clients on environmental and conservation policy and politics.

Thomas C. Jorling, adjunct professor of international and public affairs, served as minority counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Public Works from 1968 to 1972,  playing an instrumental role in enacting major environmental legislation such as the Clean Air and Water Acts. He left Washington to become a professor of environmental studies and director of the Center for Environmental Studies at Williams College in Massachusetts. Jorling later worked as an assistant administrator at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; as commissioner of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation; and as vice president of Environmental Affairs for International Paper Company. In his retirement Jorling remains active on the boards of many nonprofit organizations.

Research Scholars

Herb Lin, a senior fellow in cybersecurity, is chief scientist at the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of the National Research Council of the National Academies, where he has been study director of major projects on public policy and information technology. In recent years he has overseen studies examining privacy and information technology, cybersecurity research, healthcare informatics, offensive information warfare, and cyber deterrence, among other topics. Before joining the NRC, he served from 1986 to 1990 as a professional staff member and staff scientist for the House Armed Services Committee. Lin is also a consulting scholar at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. He received a PhD in physics from MIT.

Andrew McLaughlin, a senior fellow in technology and public policy, is a partner at betaworks, a technology and media start-up studio based in New York City, and the CEO of Digg and Instapaper. From 2009 to 2011 he served in the Obama White House as deputy chief technology officer, advising the president on Internet, technology, and innovation policy. He previously served as director of global public policy at Google and as a founding executive of ICANN, the Internet technical coordinating organization. McLaughlin is a graduate of Harvard Law School who has taught on technology issues at both Stanford and Harvard Law Schools.

Martin Wolf, global fellow, is chief economics commentator at the Financial Times. Wolf was awarded the CBE (Commander of the British Empire) in 2000 “for services to financial journalism.” He has been a forum fellow at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos since 1999 and a member of its International Media Council since 2006, and served as a member of the U.K. government's Independent Commission on Banking in 2010-2011. Wolf holds numerous honorary degrees and fellowships. His new book The Shifts and the Shocks (Penguin 2014) examines the lessons of the 2008 financial crisis.

Carlos Pascual, a senior fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy, is teaching and writing on the geopolitics of energy. He is a former U.S. Ambassador in Mexico (2009-2011) and Ukraine (2000-2003). Immediately before joining the Center he served as special envoy and coordinator for international energy affairs, a role in which he established and directed (2011-2014) the State Department’s Energy Resources Bureau and was the senior advisor to the Secretary of State on global energy diplomacy. He also has held leadership roles at the Brookings Institution, State Department, National Security Council, and U.S. Agency for international Development. In 2009, his book, Power and Responsibility, won an award for the best political science book from an independent publisher. Pascual received his MPP from Harvard Kennedy School. 

Adrian Lajous, a senior fellow in residence this semester at the Center on Global Energy Policy, is a former CEO of Pemex, Mexico’s state-owned oil company. Lajous is chairman of the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, president of Petrométrica, SC, and non-executive director of Schlumberger, Ternium, Trinity Industries and the Mario Molina Center for Strategic Studies on Energy and the Environment. He also serves on the Board of Trustees of El Colegio de México. From 2001 to 2011 he was senior energy advisor to McKinsey & Company. He previously held a senior position in the Ministry of Energy and served as a faculty member at El Colegio de Mexico.  Lajous holds degrees in economics from the National University of Mexico and Cambridge University.