Brooks School faculty briefs

Fitzpatrick elected to National Academy of Social Insurance

Maria Fitzpatrick, Senior Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at the Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy, a professor in the Economics Department, and Associate Vice Provost for Social Sciences in the Cornell Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation, was elected to the National Academy of Social Insurance (NASI) in recognition of her national prominence as a scholar in the areas of child and family policy, the economics of education, and retirement policy.

She is one of 52 experts elected by NASI and the only Cornell University scholar in this year’s group of honorees. Brooks School Dean Colleen Barry was elected in 2022.

The national nonprofit organization advances solutions to challenges facing the nation by increasing public understanding of how social insurance contributes to economic security. This mission encompasses established social insurance programs – Social Security, Medicare, Workers’ Compensation, and Unemployment Insurance – as well as related policy areas, including Medicaid, long-term services and supports, paid leave, other social assistance programs, and private employee benefits.

Fitzpatrick’s research has focused on early childhood education policies, higher education, teacher compensation, benefits and labor supply, teacher pensions and retirement, child maltreatment, incarceration’s effects on children and mothers, and the effects of retirement on the health of older Americans. Fitzpatrick is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, as well as an affiliate in the CESifo Research Network, the Cornell Population Center, and the Center for the Study of Inequality.

That research was one of the factors cited in Fitzpatrick’s NASI nomination: “She continues to conduct high quality research in the areas of retirement policies and Social Security. She actively mentors future leaders and researchers as a dissertation committee member for many students. In her senior administrative roles at Cornell, she has been instrumental in building and shaping educational programs that train students in public policy at the undergraduate, masters and doctoral levels.”

Dufresne named a Global Public Voice

Alexandra Dufresne, the Director of the State Policy Advocacy Clinic and a senior lecturer at the Brooks School, has been selected as a Global Public Voice by the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies. The Global Public Voices program promotes faculty expertise to shape public debates about global policy issues and advocate for a more just and equitable future.

Dufresne and nine other Cornell faculty will engage with national and international news media to make their voices heard on nationalism and populism, civil-military relations, international human rights, inequality and civil engagement, grassroots movements and more.

Global Public Voices works closely with Cornell’s Media Relations Office. Fellows attend monthly collaborative discussions with peers, where they receive practical media and outreach training, including support in building an international public profile and sessions on writing effective op-eds, funding proposals and policy briefs.

Dufresne is a lawyer who works at the intersection of law and public policy. She directs the new State Policy Advocacy Clinic at the Brooks School of Public Policy, in which undergraduate and master’s students work with policymakers, academics, community members, nonprofits, and advocacy organizations on state-level policy initiatives in a wide range of areas, including health policy, immigrant rights, children’s rights, criminal justice reform, and sustainability. She also teaches international human rights, immigration law and policy, and children’s law and policy.

Dufresne spent most of her career working as a lawyer for children and refugees at leading NGOs, including the Center for Children’s Advocacy, Connecticut Voices for Children, and CLINIC/Boston College Immigration and Asylum Project, where she led law students in the representation of detained refugees and immigrants. Working closely with community partners, including youth in foster care, she has led successful advocacy campaigns in Connecticut and before the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child and the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women.

Dufresne received her undergraduate degree from Yale University and her J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School. She clerked for the Hon. Martha Craig Daughtrey of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit from 2001-2002.

Barrett to lead UN agency’s new agrifood initiative

Chris Barrett, a professor in the Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy and the Stephen B. and Janice G. Ashley Professor of Applied Economics and Management in the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, has been selected to lead an initiative aimed to meet looming global food needs in a healthy, equitable, resilient and sustainable manner.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations introduced its Agrifood Systems Technologies and Innovations Outlook (ATIO) initiative at the World Food Forum in Rome last October. ATIO will be an FAO flagship publication published biennially for the U.N. group to disseminate information on science, technology and innovation in agrifood systems – which include food production, storage, postharvest handling, transportation, processing, distribution and consumption – around the world.

“The world needs to accelerate the rate of transformation of agrifood systems,” Barrett said at the Rome forum’s plenary session. “Science, technology and innovation are absolutely central to that,” he said. “It’s as much institutional and policy innovation, as it is new cultivars or better machinery or clever digital methods. It’s the bundling of the social and technical together ... to reduce [climate change] pressure on the planet while improving equity, health [and] sustainability outcomes.”

Barrett believes this new venture is an interdisciplinary opportunity for Cornell faculty, students, alumni and staff to engage and to achieve a high-level impact.

“Cornell is incredibly diverse and this project showcases all of Cornell’s strengths,” Barrett said. “ATIO is consistent with the climate change initiative being championed across campus. It is deeply tied to global hubs and the global-engagement agenda.”

Said Qu Dongyu, director-general of the FAO: “I am convinced that the launch of this innovative initiative will guarantee that essential data and evidence needed for the transformation of our global agrifood systems becomes accessible to all those who need it, particularly decision-makers.”