Ronald Kassimir

Ron Kassimir returned to the Council half-time in February 2012 as a senior advisor. He provides leadership and support for two new Africa programs funded by the Carnegie Corporation—Next Generation Social Sciences in Africa and the African Peacebuilding Network—and is organizing an Africa team to integrate and find synergies between these projects and other Africa-related Council activities. From 1996 to 2005 Ron was first a program officer and then a program director at the Council, where he managed the Africa Program and, from 2000 to 2005, the International Dissertation Field Research Fellowship Program. He also coordinated research networks on youth and globalization and humanitarian intervention. In 2005 Ron became associate dean at the New School for Social Research and associate professor in the Department of Politics, and in 2007 he moved to the New School’s Office of the Provost, where he is now associate provost for research and special projects. Ron earned a PhD in political science from the University of Chicago in 1996. He has published on religion, civil society, higher education, and globalization in Africa as well as on youth activism and civic engagement. He is coeditor of Intervention and Transnationalism in Africa: Global-Local Networks of Power (Cambridge University Press, 2001), Youth Activism: An International Encyclopedia (Greenwood Publishing, 2005), and Youth, Globalization, and the Law (Stanford University Press, 2007). He most recently published, with Connie Flanagan, “Youth Civic Engagement in the Developing World: Challenges and Opportunities” in the Handbook of Research on Civic Engagement in Youth (Wiley, 2010).