Two from CU among first 12 researchers to be Carnegie Scholars

Two members of Cornell's Peace Studies Program -- Matthew Evangelista, professor of government, and postdoctoral fellow Kathleen Vogel -- are among only 12 U.S. researchers in the first class of Carnegie Scholars.

The Carnegie Corporation of New York established the new program to support fundamental research by young scholars with outstanding promise as well as by established experts who stand to contribute significantly to the advancement of knowledge and understanding in the corporation's fields of interest. The winners were chosen in a competitive process from an initial group of 89 nominees and will receive up to $100,000 over the next two years to pursue innovative scholarship in education, international development, democracy, and international peace and security.

"For more than 90 years, Carnegie Corporation has identified and promoted ideas that have shaped positive social change," said Vartan Gregorian, president of the corporation, in announcing the winners. The Carnegie Scholars program was inaugurated in 1999. "We believe individual scholarship is an important asset in our democratic process, where new policy solutions must be supported by credible research and analysis," Gregorian said.

Evangelista is studying Moscow's recent wars with Chechnya and their implications for the future of the Russian Federation and international security. He is writing a book tentatively titled Will Russia Go the Way of the Soviet Union? Lessons of the Chechen Wars. In particular Evangelista will try to understand how war was avoided in other regions, such as Tatarstan, that sought greater autonomy from Moscow, and why some regions, whose economic interests would seem to lead them to favor a more independent role (for example Sakhalin in the Far East) have nevertheless remained loyal to the central government. The project will result in an assessment of the durability of Russia's system of "asymmetric federalism" and its consequences for international security.

Vogel is studying the former Soviet Union's biological weapons (BW) complex. The Carnegie fellowship and a separate grant from the U.S. Institute of Peace will support key aspects of this study, which will examine the proliferation concerns remaining from the complex. She will travel to Russia and Kazakhstan this summer for on-site interviews with officials and scientists at two facilities, the State Research Center for Virology and Biotechnology in Koltsovo, Russia, and Biomedpreparat in Stepnogorsk, Kazakhstan. Her project seeks to identify the current economic difficulties faced by these weapons facilities, to evaluate the obstacles or challenges to conversion or redirection to peaceful activities, and to monitor on-the-ground implementation of current U.S. and international initiatives designed to mitigate the proliferation threat.