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Pamina Firchow @pfirchow.bsky.social · May 19

What is the relationship between localization, or the shifting of power from international to local actors by addressing local priorities, and the proliferation of national and international efforts to measure, wrangle data and benchmark?
academic.oup.com/ips/article/...

The Politics of Measurement in the Age of Localization: Comparing “Top-Down” versus “Bottom-Up” Metrics of Reconciliation

academic.oup.com

Pamina Firchow @pfirchow.bsky.social · Mar 26

Take a look at this opinion piece I just published with @apaczynska.bsky.social on the complexities of accountability for international cooperation and US foreign aid thehill.com/opinion/inte...

thehill.com

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Reposted by Pamina Firchow

Maryam Deloffre @mzdeloffre.bsky.social · Feb 20

We're on the Hill! @pfirchow.bsky.social @apaczynska.bsky.social @democracyprofdc.bsky.social and Louis Berg are delivering the Open Letter to Congress as we speak. Over 217 scholars of foreign assistance have signed to demand Congress take action. @ Sen Lindsey Graham

Two scholars standing outside Senator Lindsey Graham's office delivering a letter. Interior of office visible in background.

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Reposted by Pamina Firchow

Maryam Deloffre @mzdeloffre.bsky.social · Feb 20

We're on the Hill!
@pfirchow.bsky.social @apaczynska.bsky.social @democracyprofdc.bsky.social and Louis Berg are delivering the Open Letter to Congress as we speak. Over 217 scholars of foreign assistance have signed to demand Congress take action. @schumer.senate.gov Senator Collins

Two scholars delivering a letter to Senator Chuck Schumer's office, American flag in background, official seal visible

Two scholars delivering a letter to Senator Susan Collins' office, American flag in background, official seal visible

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Pamina Firchow @pfirchow.bsky.social · Feb 20

Today we distributed the Open Letter signed by over 200 US foreign policy scholars expressing their disagreement with the dismantling of US foreign aid. Next, we will distribute to media outlets, so please send us your media contacts at [email protected]

Maryam Deloffre @mzdeloffre.bsky.social · Feb 20

We're on the Hill! @pfirchow.bsky.social @apaczynska.bsky.social @democracyprofdc.bsky.social and Louis Berg are delivering the Open Letter to Congress as we speak. Over 217 scholars of foreign assistance have signed to demand Congress take action. @schatz.bsky.social

Two scholars delivering a letter and standing in front of Rep Brian Schatz's office.

A scholar delivering a letter and standing in front of the Committee of Foreign Affairs' office.

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Pamina Firchow @pfirchow.bsky.social · Feb 17

If you are a US-based scholar of foreign policy, please join over 130 of your colleagues in signing this Letter to Congress re: the foreign assistance freeze and dismantling of USAID.

Read here: docs.google.com/.../1waW9li4....
Sign here: docs.google.com/.../1FAIpQLS...

Please Share Widely!

READ ONLY-Open Letter to Congress

Open Letter to Members of Congress from U.S.-based Scholars of Foreign Affairs Dear Senators John Thune and Charles Schumer, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Chai...

docs.google.com

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Reposted by Pamina Firchow

Hugh Agnew @hughlec.bsky.social · Feb 17

Open letter from scholars to Congress regarding the freeze of U.S. foreign assistance and the subsequent dismantling of USAID. You may read the letter (1st comment) and sign via this Google form: forms.gle/JFAQGsuLyGa4... The form will close on Wednesday, February 19, 2025 at 5:00 pm (EST).

Open Letter about Foreign Assistance to Members of Congress from US Scientists

Dear Colleagues - The following letter to Congress voices our concerns about the ongoing threats to U.S. foreign assistance and we hope you consider signing on. Once we have gathered signatures, we wi...

forms.gle

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Pamina Firchow @pfirchow.bsky.social · Jan 31

Our findings illustrate the need for the aid industry to recognize the inter-linked nature of activities undertaken after violent conflict, and how building peace and reconciliation should best be regarded as a package guided by each interlinking group.

Pamina Firchow @pfirchow.bsky.social · Jan 31

However, at the same time, we can see that there is a large level of variability from one neighborhood to another within Mostar, meaning that various factors such as ethnicity, religion, location and war experiences can influence conflict preferences.

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Pamina Firchow @pfirchow.bsky.social · Jan 31

We find that 30 years after the war, everyday people in Mostar prioritize development assistance with some integration of dialogue or conflict resolution over transitional, retributive or restorative justice mechanisms.

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Pamina Firchow @pfirchow.bsky.social · Jan 31

How do post-conflict preferences align with the priorities of donors? I address this question in World Development with my colleagues @rogermacginty.bsky.social and Julianne Funk using empirical @epi-ngo.bsky.social data from Mostar, Bosnia Herzegovina www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

After war ends: Aid paradigms and post-conflict preferences

This article is interested in aid preferences, or what people desire in terms of aid, in a post-conflict and post peace accord context. When examining…

www.sciencedirect.com

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Reposted by Pamina Firchow

Phil Lewis @phillewis.bsky.social · Jan 26

Colombian President Gustavo Petro's full post ordering an increase of import tariffs on U.S. goods, says he doesn't really like traveling to the U.S. because it's “a bit boring” and invokes the ancestors

Trump, I don't really like travelling to the US, it's a bit boring, but I confess that there are some commendable things. I like going to the black neighbourhoods of Washington, where I saw an entire fight in the US capital between blacks and Latinos with barricades, which seemed like nonsense to me, because they should join together.

I confess that I like Walt Whitman and Paul Simon and Noam Chomsky and Miller

I confess that Sacco and Vanzetti, who have my blood, are memorable in the history of the USA and I follow them. They were murdered by labor leaders with the electric chair, the fascists who are within the USA as well as within my country

I don't like your oil, Trump, you're going to wipe out the human species because of greed. Maybe one day, over a glass of whiskey, which I accept, despite my gastritis, we can talk frankly about this, but it's difficult because you consider me an inferior race and I'm not, nor is any Colombian.

So if you know someone who is stubborn, that's me, period. You can try to carry out a coup with your economic strength and your arrogance, like they did with Allende. But I will die in my law, I resisted torture and I resist you. I don't want slavers next to Colombia, we already had many and we freed ourselves. What I want next to Colombia are lovers of freedom. If you can't accompany me, I'll go elsewhere. Colombia is the heart of the world and you didn't understand that, this is the land of the yellow butterflies, of the beauty of Remedios, but also of the colonels Aureliano Buendía, of which I am one, perhaps the last.

You will kill me, but I will survive in my people, which is before yours, in the Americas. We are peoples of the winds, the mountains, the Caribbean Sea and of freedom.

You don't like our freedom, okay. I don't shake hands with white slavers. I shake hands with the white libertarian heirs of Lincoln and the black and white farm boys of the USA, at whose graves I cried and prayed on a battlefield, which I reached after walking the mountains of Italian Tuscany and after being saved from Covid.

They are the United States and before them I kneel, before no one else.

Overthrow me, President, and the Americas and humanity will respond.

Colombia now stops looking north, looks at the world, our blood comes from the blood of the Caliphate of Cordoba, the civilization of that time, of the Roman Latins of the Mediterranean, the civilization of that time, who founded the republic, democracy in Athens; our blood has the black resistance fighters turned into slaves by you. In Colombia is the first free territory of America, before Washington, of all America, there I take refuge in its African songs.

My land is made up of goldsmiths who worked in the time of the Egyptian pharaohs and of the first artists in the world in Chiribiquete.

You will never rule us. The warrior who rode our lands, shouting freedom, who is called Bolívar, opposes us.

Our people are somewhat fearful, somewhat timid, they are naive and kind, loving, but they will know how to win the Panama Canal, which you took from us with violence. Two hundred heroes from all of Latin America lie in Bocas del Toro, today's Panama, formerly Colombia, which you murdered.

I raise a flag and as Gaitán said, even if it remains alone, it will continue to be raised with the Latin American dignity that is the dignity of America, which your great-grandfather did not know, and mine did, Mr. President, an immigrant in the USA,

Your blockade does not scare me, because Colombia, besides being the country of beauty, is the heart of the world. I know that you love beauty as I do, do not disrespect it and you will give it your sweetness.

FROM TODAY ON, COLOMBIA IS OPEN TO THE ENTIRE WORLD, WITH OPEN ARMS, WE ARE BUILDERS OF FREEDOM, LIFE AND HUMANITY.

I am informed that you impose a 50% tariff on the fruits of our human labor to enter the United States, and I do the same.

Let our people plant corn that was discovered in Colombia and feed the world

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Pamina Firchow @pfirchow.bsky.social · Jan 2

Working with @epi-ngo.bsky.social on the use of knowledge creation & M&E practices in the #triplenexus, @rogermacginty.bsky.social and I have learned a few lessons. For more, read our article in Data & Policy, which will be expanded upon in our forthcoming book. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

The data myth: interrogating the evidence base for evidence-based peacebuilding | Data & Policy | Cambridge Core

The data myth: interrogating the evidence base for evidence-based peacebuilding - Volume 6

www.cambridge.org

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Pamina Firchow @pfirchow.bsky.social · Dec 23

Great news! Our 2024 symposium Measures of Justice: A Symposium in Honor of Sally Engle Merry (1944–2020) is now either open access or accessible to read without a paywall at Law & Social Inquiry.

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Measures of Justice: A Symposium in Honor of Sally Engle Merry (1944–2020) | Law & Social Inquiry | Cambridge Core

Measures of Justice: A Symposium in Honor of Sally Engle Merry (1944–2020) - Volume 49 Issue 1

www.cambridge.org

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Pamina Firchow @pfirchow.bsky.social · Dec 23

All of the contributions in the symposium attend to Merry’s concerns related to commensuration and the tendency for policy makers to want to universalize and generalize social life as they try to professionalize human rights, humanitarianism and peacebuilding, or conflict response broadly defined.

Pamina Firchow @pfirchow.bsky.social · Dec 23

The symposium contributions fall generally into two broad areas: questions related to commensurability in measurement and questions related to commensurability in the law more broadly.

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Pamina Firchow @pfirchow.bsky.social · Dec 23

This features several insightful contributions to the literature on the conceptualization and measurement of justice. They reflect the disciplinary and thematic breadth that spanned Sally Engle Merry’s work, from political science to anthropology and from human rights to peace and conflict studies.

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