IHP Climate Change: The Politics of Food, Water, and Energy
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Faculty and Staff
The faculty/staff team shown on this page is a sample of the individuals who may lead your specific program. Faculty and coordinators are subject to change to accommodate each program’s unique schedule and locations.
| Program Director | |
|---|---|
| Christian Parenti | |
| Program Manager | |
|---|---|
| Chris Westcott | |
| Country Coordinators | |
|---|---|
| Phuong Hoang, Vietnam Coordinator | Jawad Moustakbal, Morocco Coordinator |
| Kathryn Ledebur, Bolivia Coordinator | |
| Traveling Faculty | |
|---|---|
| Virginie Le Masson, Fall | Eddie Yuen, Fall |
| Patrick Bresnihan, Fall | Robert Eshelman, Spring |
| Bengi Akbulut, Spring | |
| Trustees' Fellows | |
|---|---|
| Sara Bradshaw, Fall | Michael Aguilar, Spring |
Christian Parenti
Program Director
PhD, London School of Economics and Political Science
BA, Eugene Lang College, New School for Social Research
Christian holds a PhD in sociology (co-supervised in geography) from the London School of Economics; he has also completed a series of postdoctoral fellowships at the City University of New York Graduate Center where he worked closely with the geographers Neil Smith and David Harvey. He has held fellowships from the Open Society Institute, the Ford Foundation, and the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation. He arrived at SIT in 2011 from a teaching position at Brooklyn College. His current research focuses on the environmental history of state involvement in American economic development, from the earliest days of the republic onward. Most of his previous publications have focused on war, crime, repression, surveillance, and state power.
His latest book, Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence (2011), explores how climate change is already causing violence as it interacts with the social legacies of economic neoliberalism and cold-war militarism. The book involved several years of travel and research in conflict zones of the Global South.
His three earlier books are The Freedom: Shadows and Hallucinations in Occupied Iraq (2005), a work of analytic and ethnographic reportage on the first years of US military occupation in Iraq; The Soft Cage: Surveillance in America from Slavery to the War on Terror (2002), a history of routine, everyday surveillance that traces the development of political technologies, like fingerprinting and photographic identification, from their origins in the antebellum South to the present; and Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis (2000/2008), Christian’s first book, considered a social science classic. Lockdown explores the history of the US prison and policing buildup since the 1960s and argues that the buildup is rooted in both global-scale economy shifts and national discursive projects of racialized class control and political theater.
As a journalist, he has reported extensively from Afghanistan, Iraq, and various parts of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. His articles have appeared in Fortune, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Middle East Report, London Review of Books, Mother Jones, and The Nation (where he is a contributing editor). He has also helped make several documentaries and has won numerous journalistic awards, including the 2009 Lange-Tailor Prize and “Best Magazine Writing 2008” from the Society for Professional Journalists. He also received a 2009 Emmy nomination for the documentary Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi.
In addition to serving as academic director of the IHP/Comparative program on climate change, Christian teaches courses on sustainable development and intercultural service, leadership, and management at SIT Graduate Institute. He splits his time between New York City and Brattleboro, Vermont, and is a native of Putney, Vermont.
Chris Westcott
Program Manager
Chris Westcott's bio coming soon.
Phuong Hoang
Country Coordinator
Phuong Hoang's bio coming soon.
Jawad Moustakbal
Country Coordinator
Jawad Moustakbal's bio coming soon.
Kathryn Ledebur
Country Coordinator
Kathryn Ledebur's bio coming soon.
Virginie Le Masson
Faculty
Virginie Le Masson's bio coming soon.
Eddie Yuen
Faculty
Eddie Yuen's bio coming soon.
Patrick Bresnihan
Faculty
Patrick Bresnihan's bio coming soon.
Robert Eshelman
Faculty
Robert Eshelman's bio coming soon.
Bengi Akbulut
Faculty
Bengi Akbulut's bio coming soon.
Sara Bradshaw
Trustees' Fellow
Sara Bradshaw's bio coming soon.
Michael Aguilar
Trustees' Fellow
Michael Aguilar's bio coming soon.
Duration: Fall or Spring, 15 weeks
Program Sites:
USA, Vietnam, Morocco, Bolivia
Prerequisites: Coursework in political science, economics, and/or environmental science recommended. Learn More...
Climate Change Fall Itinerary
View Student Evaluations for this program:
About the Evaluations (PDF)
Phone:
888.272.7881 (toll-free in US)
802.258.3212
TTY:
802.258.3388
Fax:
802.258.3296
Mailing Address:
PO Box 676, 1 Kipling Road
Brattleboro, VT 05302 USA