Cyrus Samii

Job posting from our friends at the Columbia University Center for the Study of Development Strategies (link):

International Rescue Committee: Job Opening in Congo as CDR Evaluation Quality Manager

The CSDS team is undertaking a large evaluation in the Congo. Our partner – the International Rescue Committee – currently has a job opening for an Evaluation Quality Manager. The person would support the evaluation that tries to understand the impact of one of Africa’s largest community development projects. He or she will be responsible for liaising between the IRC team implementing the program and the team at Columbia leading the research design. He or she would support quality integration of research variables into program delivery. This includes piloting tools and instruments integrated into the program, training field staff, assisting and monitoring data collection at the grassroots level throughout Eastern DRC, conducting basic data analysis and writing up results.

More information here: PDF: IRC Position in Congo – CDR Evaluation Quality Manager.

The position is probably especially well suited for somebody planning to do a PhD – it is a perfect way to get field experience and learn the ins and outs of evaluation work.

A post-doc opportunity that came through the wires:

The Department of Politics at Princeton University seeks applicants for two (2) Postdoctoral Research Associate positions in the fields of Formal Theory or Quantitative Analysis. These positions involve a year of research at Princeton. Applications are welcome from scholars who will have received their doctoral degrees within the four years prior to the start of the position (September 1, 2012). If the successful candidate is ABD at the time of appointment, he or she will be appointed at the rank of Associate Professional Specialist. The aim of the program is to nurture a diverse group of promising scholars and to increase the critical mass of scholars with interests in formal theory and quantitative methods at Princeton. Interested applicants should apply online at http://jobs.princeton.edu and submit a CV, cover letter, writing sample, and the names and contact information of three references.

Transcripts should be sent directly to F/Q Postdoctoral Fellowship Search, Department of Politics, 130 Corwin Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544. We will begin reviewing applications on February 15, 2012. Princeton University is an equal opportunity employer and complies with applicable EEO and affirmative action regulations.

From the Microcon/HICN email list:

The Households in Conflict Network (HiCN) is seeking a Short-Term Consultant to prepare a project proposal on the social and political transformation in the Arab world. The research project will focus on determinants, forms and effects of individual participation in the recent protests across the region. We are looking for a consultant, available on short notice, to write a complete research proposal in collaboration with project’s international partners.

Successful candidates should have a master’s or doctoral degree in economics, political science, sociology or development studies. Excellent English, proven writing skills, grant writing experience, and the ability to work independently under tight deadlines are essential prerequisites. Interest in the MENA region, and a working knowledge of Arabic would be an advantage. Candidates should be available to work full-time on this project for 4 months from October 2011 till 5 February 2012. The remuneration is competitive, and the consultant must be available to work in Berlin. Applications from abroad are encouraged, but the successful candidate must be willing to relocate to Berlin for the period of the project.

If you are interested, please send a detailed CV, letter of motivation, reference letter (if available), and one recent writing sample in English by email to Mira Purska (mpurska [at] diw.de). The deadline for applications is 26 September 2011. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted for an interview.

United States and France [are] two countries…generally viewed as polar opposites as far as the political legitimacy and legal validity of race-based classifications are concerned. Based on an in-depth study of recent programs designed to increase the “diversity” of the student body in selective institutions of higher education, I will argue that French and U.S. policies are currently converging around the instrument of indirect (and often implicit) affirmative action.

[W]hat might be the causal mechanisms involved [in this convergence]? There is not even a shred of evidence that the policy convergence…is the result of a diffusion process. [Rather]…the rise of indirect affirmative action is linked to the widespread endorsement of the quintessentially political metagoal…“to integrate the national community by rubbing out in the [public’s] consciousness (…) a perception of racial difference”…that is, to reduce the salience of racial boundaries and eventually “eliminate race” as a principle of social organization. Because policies unavoidably have an expressive as well as an instrumental dimension, the very existence of an allocative scheme taking account of race in a transparent way is likely to jeopardize the “deracialization” that one is trying to bring about in the long run. So long as the criterion of race is seen to operate at the preliminary stage of identifying the participants in the interaction process, it remains unlikely that racial decategorization will occur.

From Daniel Sabbagh’s paper in the current issue of World Politics (gated link). For France, his primary evidence comes from recent experimentation with diversity-based admissions at Sciences Po. For the US, his evidence comes from a variety of examples where explicit race-based provisions, despite their constitutional admissability, have been eschewed in favor of measures that seem intentionally to obfuscate de facto race-based preferential treatment.

Affirmative action policies are a research interest of mine, and Sabbagh has done interesting work, though his focus is mostly on wealthy countries whereas mine is more on lower income and primarily post-conflict countries. Worth a look as well is his syllabus on comparing affirmative action policies (link).

For NYU and NYC-area graduate students, Joel Middleton and I are planning a year-long sequence that will train graduate students to design and analyze surveys and field experiments. Here’s the announcement:

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The PRIISM Center would like to bring to your attention the following complementary course offering that involve NYU’s Steinhardt School and its Graduate School of Arts & Sciences (GSAS). More information, including dates/times of instruction can be found here: http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/humsocsci/interdepartmental/courses or through links to the sponsoring departments at this site: http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/priism/courses

Series on Sampling, Design, and Inference:

This year-long series will cover both introductory and advanced topics in the design and analysis of sample surveys and social experiments. The series will consist of a Fall course titled, “Sampling, Design, and Inference I: Survey Research Methods,” taught through the Steinhardt School, and a Spring course titled, “Sampling, Design, and Inference II: Quantitative Field Methods,” taught through the GSAS Politics Department. The Fall 2011 course will be an introductory and hands-on overview for graduate students who plan to carry out or analyze sample surveys. The Spring 2012 course will provide advanced training in sampling and will extend these techniques to experimental design and analysis. A brief description follows.

RESCH-GE 2139 Sampling and Inference I: Survey Research Methods (3 points) Instructor: Joel Middleton (Steinhardt School), FALL 2011

This course will be based on an existing Survey Research Methods course that has been offered through Steinhardt in recent years, previously taught by Jack Buckley. Undergraduate-level introductory statistics is required but no previous experience with survey research is presumed. This course intends to train graduate students in the following: total survey error; creation and pre-testing of survey instruments; basic principles of sampling, power, measurement, and design-based inference; analysis of data from sample surveys using design-based and model-based analytical techniques. The texts for this course will be at the level of Groves et al., Survey Methodology, Wiley, 2004, with selected readings from Lohr, Sampling: Design and Analysis, Duxbury, 1999.

POL-GA 3200 Sampling and Inference II: Quantitative Field Methods (4 points) Instructor: Cyrus Samii (GSAS/Politics), SPRING 2012

This is a more advanced graduate course for those who wish to go further than what is provided in the Survey Research Methods course and to become expert in sampling and field experiment methodology. Prerequisites will be introductory graduate-level statistics. The Survey Research Methods course (or equivalent) is recommended though not required. This course will cover: foundations of sample-theoretic and randomization-based estimation and testing; optimal design of samples and experiments via stratification and adaptive designs; non-standard design problems, including network samples and other forms of “indirect” sampling and randomization; estimation and testing under clustering, interference, non-compliance, and other non-standard scenarios; examination of state of the art sampling, field experiment, and survey experiment studies. The texts for this course will be at the level of Sarndal et al., Model Assisted Survey Sampling, Springer, 1992, and Imbens and Rubin, Causal Inference in Statistics, Cambridge, forthcoming.

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While Joel and I will teach these two classes separately, we are each planning guest appearances in each others’ classes on special topics. Hope to see you there.