About James Ron

James Ron is the Stassen Chair of International Affairs at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School & Department of Political Science; an affiliated professor at CIDE, a public research institute in Mexico; and at Israel’s Ben Gurion University of the Negev. 

Articles by James Ron

Anglo-American media: why so interested in Latin America’s human rights abuses?

In the 1980s and 1990s, elite Anglo-American media sources cared more about Latin American abuses than those occurring anywhere else in the world. Why?

Making schools safe

To really make schools safe, we’d have to turn them into fortified enclaves, with perimeters of concrete, sandbags at the entrance, and a well trained team of alert, heavily-armed, and strongly-defended infantry.

Foreign aid to local NGOs: good intentions, bad policy

International solidarity is a wonderful idea, and the notion of transferring resources from North to South for good causes is morally attractive. The mechanics of doing this properly, however, are far more complex. 

Revolutionizing the Canadian social justice sector

Environmental groups seem to have attracted particular government ire. In other cases, officials have labelled civic groups unpatriotic… The Conservatives may have done Canadians a favour. Deprived of federal funding, independent activists will now have to learn new ways of ethically raising money from individuals, communities, and businesses.

Mexico's parallel worlds

It is strange how you have to go abroad to see the ability of wildly divergent realities to persist, side-by-side, as if nothing were more natural.

Middle East hawks should welcome the UN Palestine vote

At their very best, Israeli-Palestinian partition plans envision the same kind of complex ethnic patchwork rejected by western diplomats in Bosnia.

This week's editor

Heather McRobie


Niki Seth-Smith is a freelance journalist and co-editor of OurKingdom.

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