Elections for President of the ISA 2021 Round: THANK YOU!! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

THANK YOU!

A warm Caribbean and African and Asian greeting to you! Thank you all so much -- 204 signatories on the letter nominating JBW for ISA president, collected in a mere two weeks! It was a tremendous affirmation of Global South, racial and gender potential in the field of international relations, so long dominated by the North. Yet so many of you who signed were FROM the global north, all genders, all races, all parts of the world. We could not ask for more. At a time of racial turmoil around the world, we offered the first Black (and female) candidate for president in ISA history, one who has served for probably the longest time of all but Executive Directors, on the Governing Council, one who has a long history of work on the "third world," was among the first to use "Global South" as a title in her edited work on foreign policy (see Foreign Policies of the Global South, Lynne Rienner 2003) and one who specializes in the smaller, neglected regions of the world, not the big powers. We are very proud of this nomination. (And it was great seeing the names of all of you who have followed JBW to the heat of Singapore and fun days in Havana!) You all have truly amazing resumes--we've looked at each and every one-- and we are hopeful that we can meet and stay in contact with you all.

Although the ISA Nominating Committee did not choose our candidate for their slate, please know that your support was very important to ensuring that we were even considered. Next year, the Global South Caucus will be celebrating ten years of existence, of working to influence the agenda of the ISA. We now see an urgent need to bring deeper structural change, as well as to reaffirm our commitment to bringing racial and geographical diversity to the organization. To begin, we will work on changing ISA's election procedures so that there is more transparency. The presidency of ISA, the highest and most important position, MUST be opened up to all. We currently do not know how the Nomination Committee makes its decisions or exactly what criteria it imposes and how. For example, why only one candidate is offered for the membership vote is a mystery to us.

Join us in offering your ideas about how we can accomplish CHANGE in ISA!

Attached please see some articles written by sympathizers and others (not necessarily members of the caucus), if you've missed them. Seifudein Adem, our past Treasurer, is a contributor to the last-listed discussion. He has also recently produced a great book reviewing the contributions of our first Distinguished Scholar, Dr. Ali Mazrui. He can be reached at Seifudein Adem <seifudein@hotmail.com>

http://saideman.blogspot.com/2016/03/ir-full-female-profs-of-color-few-and.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2018/09/11/even-progressive-academics-can-be-racist-ive-experienced-it-firsthand/
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/06/19/why-race-matters-international-relations-ir/
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/07/03/why-is-mainstream-international-relations-ir-blind-to-racism-colonialism/

Please send to us any IR articles which you find on the subject of race, eurocentrism etc. We will put them up (links) on the blog.
Best wishes to all!!
J. Braveboy-Wagner, Presidential Candidate 2021 round
and Eric Degila, Caucus chair/Head of the Nominating Team
comprised also of Alan Chong and Aigul Kulnazarova
(Thanks also to Mariana Kalil and Consuelo Davila for their excellent work and special thanks to Thomas Tieku whose tweets on this and otehr subjects can be found at @tiekutom)