Ginsberg receives international honor

Roy H. Ginsberg, Joseph C. Palamountain Jr. Professor of Government at Skidmore College, has received a rare international honor: he is one of four scholars in the United States - and 34 throughout the world - recently named a Jean Monnet Professor of European Integration Studies.

Jean Monnet professors are senior scholars/teachers specializing in European integration studies at colleges and universities around the globe. Under the auspices of the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union (E.U.), the program provides support for the development of new projects that enhance European studies, and resources to strengthen existing curricular initiatives in this area. Jean Monnet professors are part of a broader program designed to increase knowledge and awareness of European integration through teaching, research, public outreach, and debate.

There are several activities that Ginsberg will be able to accomplish as a result of his new role, which has a term of three years. They include the following: bringing Skidmore students to briefings at the United Nations and the European Union delegation to the U.N. in New York City, inviting guest speakers from the academic and policy worlds to campus to address issues connected to the E.U. and E.U.-U.S. relations, assisting and preparing Skidmore students who wish to participate in Model European Union, an intercollegiate and international undergraduate simulation of the E.U. (similar to the Model U.N.), and organizing an annual one-day teaching workshop at Skidmore for Capital District students and professors on current issues in E.U.-U.S. relations. Topics could include cooperation on anti-crime and anti-terror initiatives, the effects of the Greek financial crisis on the Euro and the dollar, and EU peacekeeping operations in Africa and the Western Balkans.

In addition, he hopes to conduct field work in European capitals for a new book project under contract with Palgrave Macmillan and titled The European Union in Global Security: The Politics of Impact. Ginsberg and his co-author, Professor Susan Penksa of Westmont College in Santa Barbara, hope to see the book published in 2011.

Ginsberg, a leading scholar on the European Union, teaches courses on international politics, international law, comparative European government, and international political economy. A sought-after speaker, he has traveled frequently to Europe on his own and under the auspices of the U.S. Department of State for research and educational activities.

His most recent book is titled Demystifying the European Union: The Enduring Logic of Regional Integration (Rowman & Littlefield), the second edition of which was released in March 2010. In addition, he is the author or coauthor of the following books: Foreign Policy Actions of the European Community: The Politics of Scale; European Union-United States Relations in the 1990s: The Elements of Partnership; The United States and the European Union in the 1990s: Partners in Transition; and The European Union in International Politics: Baptism by Fire.

The Jean Monnet professorships honor the memory of Monnet, a wine merchant from Cognac, France, and former undersecretary of the League of Nations. His idea of fostering Franco-German reconciliation after World War II through economic integration was the genesis for the establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community of 1951 and the European Economic Community of 1958, forerunners of the current European Union, founded in 1993. An economist, Monnet was the first president of the High Authority of the European Coal and Steel Community. He died in 1979 and was later interred at the Pantheon in Paris.