A letter from Ira Katznelson, Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History and Deputy Director of Columbia World Projects.

Columbia World Projects seeks to generate creative collaborations among scholars and practitioners who work on fundamental human challenges. To that end, the scholarship and convening aspect of CWP has been creating three generative and flexible sites — studios — workspaces whose propositional thinking aims to trace the relative capacities of alternative pathways to a desired goal.

These initial studios, whose first stage of work is underway, focus on cities, democracy and implementation.

Cities concentrate people and activities. They also impose on nature. They are places of inclusion and isolation, harmony and discord, beauty and ugliness, opportunity and danger. What constitutes decent cities that enhance positive probabilities and limit deprivation, exclusion and intolerance?

Democracies based on the rule of law and individual and public rights presently are under stress. Not just U.S. democracy but many others are undergoing dilemmas of legitimacy marked by doubt about their capacity to solve large problems and gain the allegiance of their populations. How might political parties, legislatures, interests groups, social movements overcome such disenchantment to successfully address questions concerning climate change, immigration, national security and other significant policy challenges?

Implementation mediates between ideas and practice. At the very center of CWP lies the potential to connect scholarly knowledge, project design and evaluation, and feedback to scholarship, with the goal of improving the implementation of policy ideas. This studio has begun to consider when and how shifts to situations and contexts shape the causal power of interventions and which kinds of evaluative tools are most appropriate in diverse circumstances.

The capacity of each studio will depend on lowering barriers between scholars and practitioners, and on mobilizing networks of colleagues within Columbia and well beyond; that is, on building networks. To just such an end, our CWP team has begun to fashion a network of Columbia scholars and leaders in government and the nonprofit world who focus on New York City’s profound challenges in housing and homelessness, public health and racial equity, among other central issues, at the intersection of thinking and doing.

As the work generated by this and other networks proceeds in the coming academic year, we look forward to a range of activities with which students and faculty across Columbia will be connected, including conferences about urban ethics, the ecology of river and delta cities, dilemmas of political parties and conundrums of political action.

Ira Katznelson