By Will Marshall February 7, 2020 BOLOGNA, Italy - Students of Professor Michael Leigh’s Fall 2019 course, The European Union: Integration or Disintegration?, were treated to a taste of the painstaking process surrounding the Brexit negotiations through an in-class simulation over the course of two weeks which included a working dinner at the professor’s home…
Domestic News
SAIS Europe students learn negotiation skills as part of Prof. Michael Leigh’s Brexit simulation
By Will Marshall February 7, 2020 BOLOGNA, Italy - Students of Professor Michael Leigh’s Fall 2019 course, The European Union: Integration or Disintegration?, were treated to a taste of the painstaking process surrounding the Brexit negotiations through an in-class simulation over the course of two weeks which included a working dinner at the professor’s home…
Italy’s Sardine Send Salvini Packing from Emilia-Romagna
By Zoe Mize BOLOGNA, Italy – On 26 January, the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna, the home of Ferrari cars, Parmesan ham and SAIS Europe’s Bologna campus, held a hotly contested regional election. Right-wing Lega (League) candidate Lucia Borgonzoni lost the regional presidency to Democratic Party (PD) incumbent Stefano Bonaccini by a margin of 7%. A…
Continue reading ➞ Italy’s Sardine Send Salvini Packing from Emilia-Romagna
Political activism and social media: Friends or foes?
By Mohit Mann November 28, 2019 Flag waving at the DNC on Thursday night. retrieved from: https://www.flickr.com/photos/number7cloud/28015080104. Author: Lorie Shaull. Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0) At this year’s annual summit for the Obama Foundation, former U.S. President Barack Obama addressed issues regarding civic engagement in the United States. Major news outlets covering the summit…
Continue reading ➞ Political activism and social media: Friends or foes?
Does SAIS Europe have the harshest grading system across the three SAIS campuses?
By Yilin Wang WASHINGTON, D.C – If you have spoken to SAIS students who did their first year in Bologna, you likely already heard an impassioned speech about the harsh grading approach at the campus. In the course of a comprehensive investigation, the SAIS Observer spoke to students who spent a year at SAIS Europe…
Continue reading ➞ Does SAIS Europe have the harshest grading system across the three SAIS campuses?
DC pushes to expand affordable housing
By Gerhard Ottehenning WASHINGTON, D.C. — Last month, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser released a plan to expand affordable housing to wealthier portions of the city through the use of vouchers and subsidies. While current and future SAIS students would welcome removing the cost of rent from their list of go-to small talk conversations, political headwinds…
The return of Chinese overseas students to the motherland: Filial piety and nation building 中国留学生回国：孝道与民族建设
By Michael Xiaochen Zhang 张笑尘 December 20, 2019 NANJING, China — As China enters a new era of social development in tandem with a more mature phase of the economic growth development cycle, an increasing number of Chinese students choose to study abroad, primarily in the United States. In recent years, an increasing proportion of…
Hair interwoven: China’s wig market in Africa
By Song Qingqing December 1, 2019 A man cutting a woman’s hair on the street for a wig. Source: Wangyi News Across China’s third and fourth-tier cities, visitors may notice scooter-riding men and women carrying loudspeakers advertising that they are “collecting hair, long hair wanted, high prices for long hair.” Interested passersby may stop the…
Continue reading ➞ Hair interwoven: China’s wig market in Africa
Education with Chinese characteristics: Educational reform measures in Nanjing fail to address structural concerns 中国特色教育：南京市的教改措施并不能解决结构性问题
By Daniel Mikesell December 12, 2019 NANJING, China — Under a recent inspection into Nanjing schools, officials rummaged through students’ backpacks and lockers looking for forbidden educational materials. To Western audiences, such an image may seem like a scene out of George Orwell’s “1984.” However, this is not the aspect of China’s education system that…
SAISer Book Review: “Daughter of China:”A Tale of Espionage at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center in 1980s Communist China
By Aidan Li Ping Greer “Daughter of China: The True Story of Forbidden Love in Modern China”By Meihong Xu and Larry EngelmannPaperback, 378 pagesPublished 1999 by Headline Book Publishing The original cover of “Daughter of China.” Source: Goodreads.com “Are there spies among us?” It is not uncommon to overhear Hopkins-Nanjing Center (HNC) students and professors…