With Puerto Rico currently $72 billion in debt, School of Public Policy Ph.D. student Justin Vélez-Hagan has been in the news recently explaining the severity of the situation and its potential impact on the world economy.

Vélez-Hagan, who is executive director of the National Puerto Rican Chamber of Commerce, shared his views on what has contributed to the debt crisis and what can be done to help get the economy back on track. “Not being able to have autonomous control over all of its policies puts Puerto Rico at a major disadvantage over other economies that it competes with for labor, business investment, and tourism,” he wrote in an op-ed for Fox News Latino.   

Vélez-Hagan was also a guest on “The Takeaway with John Hockenberry,” a co-production of WNYC Radio and Public Radio International, in collaboration with the New York Times and WGBH Boston, to discuss the debt crisis. “The best solution is really a court overseeing restructuring through Chapter 9 bankruptcy. I think would be the best way to start,” he said during the segment.

Update: Watch an interview with Vélez-Hagan that aired July 13 on the Al Jazeera English world broadcast about his analysis on Puerto Rico’s fiscal crisis. 

On July 21, Joseph Tatarewicz, an associate professor of history, published an article in The Conversation analyzing the history of space exploration in light of the recent NASA New Horizons Pluto mission. Professor Tatarewicz teaches the history of science and technology, policy, and public history. He has done extensive work in public history, including eight years as a Smithsonian museum curator and ten years in private practice. He is author of Space Technology and Planetary Astronomy. 

“The boomers are the first generation to witness the initial exploration of our solar system and the last to be taught that standard phrase, ‘the nine planets.’ During the last half-century, scientific research and Cold War politics brought to a head changes in scientific disciplines and organization that had been maturing for centuries,” Tatarewicz wrote in the article.

Tatarewicz stated that the New Horizons voyage marked the end of the Copernican revolution, but there is still plenty to discover: “The entire New Horizons mission over 15 years cost about US$700 million, or $47 million per year – less than Americans spend on soft drinks. All of space exploration is but spare change, and this mission’s tariff almost invisible on anybody’s ledger. Like the Romans, we demanded bread and circuses during the space program’s heyday in its first decade or so. This circus is already quite a bargain. Throw some spare change into the next model of an orphan mission of exploration. You will need to have patience, but you will be rewarded.”

Read “New Horizons brought our last ‘first look’ at one of the original nine solar system planets” in The Conversation.

On July 23, James Smalls, professor of Visual Arts and affiliate professor of Gender and Women’s Studies, published an article in The Conversation that discussed the rationale behind his upcoming course, Roaming the Star Trek Universe: Race, Gender, and Alien Sexualities. Sensing that students often seem very “connected” but are simultaneously distanced from the overwhelming complexities of the world around them, Smalls set out to find ways in which to explore the difficult topics of race, gender and sexuality. “I found part of the answer,” he said, “by traveling back to the 1960s, when difficult social change movements around race (civil rights, black power), gender (the women’s movement) and sexuality (the gay and lesbian movement) were in full swing and paralleled the national obsession with technology, the space race and indulgence in popular culture as a way to both escape and liberate ourselves.”

“One way to do this,” he added, “is to ask probing questions so to get students thinking about ways in which interspecies conflicts among humans, Vulcans, Romulans, Klingons, Andorians, Betazoids, Cardassians and Bajorans, to name a few, are portrayed and how they mirror or parallel disagreements between today’s nations, races, genders, religions and classes.”

Read “A teacher uses Star Trek for difficult conversations on race and gender” in The Conversation.

Sunil Dasgupta, director of UMBC’s political science program at the Universities of Shady Grove, recently published an article in International Relations and Security Network (ISN) News on the establishment of world powers through norms and institutions instead of superior capabilities over others.

Using the example of Britain, Dasgupta noted that despite its decline, its membership in international institutions ensures the country staying power on the world stage: “Britain remains a veto-carrying, permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, one of a handful of nuclear weapons states, a rich country, and one of the closest allies of the United States. Despite Prime Minister Cameron’s focus on domestic politics, there is no expectation that the British government will concede any of these positions in the future. To the contrary, Security Council membership can be seen as ensuring that Britain remains a ‘world power’ no matter what other circumstances change. Indeed, has Britain really resigned as a world power?”

Dasgupta wrote that in modern times there is more than one way to become a world power than merely having advanced economies and militaries: “Since the end of World War II, however, international norms have reduced the importance of both 1) conventional economic and military capabilities and 2) a country’s position relative to others in this regard. While the intense rivalry between the United States and the former Soviet Union overshadowed serious discussion of norms and beliefs during the Cold War, it became clear thereafter, with the rise of Japan and Germany as economic heavyweights with limited military capacity, that there were other pathways to great power status.”

Read “What Makes a Great Power?” in ISN.

In the wake of the visit of 65 mayors to the Vatican to discuss climate change, School of Public Policy Professor John Rennie Short wrote an article for The Conversation reflecting on the central role of cities in climate change discussions.

“Cities house more than half the world’s population, consume 75% of its energy and emit 80% of all greenhouse gasses. But cities are not just sources of problems; they are innovative sites for policy solutions,” wrote Short, who is an expert on urban issues and environmental concerns.

In his article, he wrote that many cities are on the front lines of climate change impacts, which has spurred action to address environmental concerns and form urban networks to learn which policies are working.

“The brute facts of climate change vulnerability in cities are prompting a new and more pronounced urban environmental sensitivity. Cities are responding with both climate change mitigation and adaption. Mitigation focuses on reducing the concentrations of greenhouse gases by using alternative energy sources, encouraging greater energy efficiency and conservation, and through the promotion of carbon sinks by planting trees.

Separately, cities are adapting to the effects of climate change. Chicago has developed policies anticipating a hotter and wetter climate by repaving its roads with permeable materials, planting more trees and offering tax incentive to encourage green office roofs,” Short wrote.

Read “Why cities are a rare good news story in climate change” in The Conversation.

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