Sarah Bauerle Danzman - Assistant Professor of International Studies at Indiana University and Term Member at the Council on Foreign Relations
/Three pieces of advice:
It is important to learn how to be your own best advocate.
Start early to find internships that will build up your resume.
Finding a mentor or support group is essential to having a successful career.
CV in brief:
Education: B.A. in Political Science, Government and Economics at Villanova University | Ph.D. Political Science at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Career so far: Consulting Group Analyst at CitiGroup Smith Barney | Ph.D. Candidate University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill |Postdoctoral Research Fellow - Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance at Princeton University | Foreign Affairs Officer at U.S. Department of State | Assistant Professor at Indiana University Bloomington | Term Member at the Council on Foreign Relations
Date of interview: October 2020
Author: Lara Twerenbold
Your work and research revolve around the political economy of international investment and finance. Can you tell us what sparked your interest in a career in this field of foreign policy?
I always found it interesting to think about how international political economy (IPE) and foreign policy intersect. A concern for people is at the heart of my scholarship, where I have been interested in IPE from the standpoint of how globalization affects people in both developed countries and developing countries. I am equally interested in how globalization relates to broad trends of development and what this means for the national security of countries, as well as issues of justice and fairness at the global and local levels.
Much of comprehending global affairs comes down to understanding the financial aspects. My education at Villanova University Pennsylvania, as well as my early career experience as a technical analyst with CitiGroup Smith Barney, provided me a foundational understanding of the financial sector. My focus during graduate school centered on IPE – more specifically the politics of foreign investment – which was central to my interest in understanding power in the global economy, how it relates to development outcomes, and how that in turn relates to security issues.
What has your experience as a Policy Advisor in the U.S. Department of State and CFIUS & a Foreign Investment Security Staff member in the Office of Investment Affairs been like?
From August 2019 to August 2020, I worked at the U.S. Department of State as a Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) Fellow. My job title is a Foreign Affairs Officer in the Office of Investment Affairs, where I am part of a team that reviews foreign acquisitions of US-based companies to signal potential national security concerns. This complements my role as a professor of International Studies at Indiana University, where I am currently working on a project on the nexus of national security and foreign investment.
I also wish to highlight the fellowship programme, which has been a long-standing initiative of the CFR, bridging academia and policy-making. It allows academics working on issues related to US foreign policy to gain hands-on experience over a one-year period, in a government agency or an international organization. On the other hand, the fellowship is also open to individuals working in government or international organizations and provides the opportunity to complement the professional experience with academic research at a think tank.
How are national security and foreign investment interlinked and why is it important to examine both in relation to each other?
In the 70s, there were a lot of concerns in the US about adversarial countries potentially exploiting the openness of the US economic system in ways that could create national security concerns. In that context, concerns were mainly about investments by Petrol States in the Middle East, which some argued would create a dangerous dependency, posing a threat to national security. CFIUS was designed to take that process out of politics into a more technocratic process. Over time, there have been various concerns about how investment from other countries might impact national security. In the mid-2000s, Dubai Ports World announced the acquisition of several ports within the US. This was particularly controversial in the context of the war on terrorism. As a consequence, the CFIUS committee was strengthened and given more authority around critical infrastructure. The objective is to ensure that external investments in large US infrastructure do not produce the untenable situation where investors might seek to seize on a political issue and threaten operations especially during diplomatic crises. Increasingly, there have also been concerns around issues related to critical technology and its importance for dual use, and military use in particular. Often, investment screening looks specifically at the supply chain for domestic military operations.
You have been a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations since June 2020. What has your experience been like so far and what does your work entail?
While doing my fellowship at the Council on Foreign Relations, I applied for term membership. It is a five-year program for young professionals which also offers valuable networking opportunities. Requirements include an age limit of 30 to 36 years at time of application and being a US citizen or permanent resident who has applied for citizenship. The programme offers a diverse range of experiences from opportunities for professional development to field trips which places you at the forefront of a variety of actors in the foreign policy space. The CFR comprises a unique dynamic of actors across government, foreign affairs, and the private sector. This strengthens the understanding of the business side of foreign policy, which is sometimes under appreciated.
It is crucial for the legitimacy of investment screening bodies that they are not seen as pursuing a particular politician’s agenda but are focused squarely on national security. In the US context, however, there have been problems in terms of hyper partisanship in recent years. But CFIUS and investment security have been areas with a lot of bipartisan support. The legislation that was passed to strengthen CFIUS in 2018 was a bipartisan bill, which doesn't occur very frequently. It is certainly the case that different administrations might take on different risk profiles when interpreting the set of facts before them. But most of the work of the committee happens at the working level instead of the political level which means that it stays mostly bureaucratic and technocratic. Additionally, there are specific rules that need to be followed in case of a potential national security risk.
What have been the most challenging aspects of your career, and how does being a woman influence that?
It is mostly about gaining inner confidence to feel like I have something to contribute, but also taking up space in a male dominated world. It is harder as a woman academic working in foreign policy to be seen as an expert. The way that prestigious academics develop their stature as experts is by being invited to give talks or commentaries. To command the authority that people associate with professors is a lot more difficult when you're a woman and younger looking. However, I have found that working in government as a woman is easier. It seems as if the government has moved faster than academia in terms of inclusivity, which is an indication of how hierarchical and conservative academia still is today.
The emphasis on diversity, inclusion and mentorship of promising young female professionals and leaders has helped to open up opportunities for women in foreign policy. My direct supervisor and my assistant secretary are both women. Having women in positions of authority helped to set a tone that women's voices are appreciated in the agency and interagency. At the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis when we transitioned into a work-from-home environment, our assistant secretary was focused on making sure that people felt supported throughout the process, especially around issues related to childcare. That's just another indication of why descriptive representation is important. An administration entirely filled with men, and particularly white men, who may never have had to think about childcare throughout their entire career, just wouldn't think about it as an issue that needed to be dealt with.
You are also an Assistant Professor at Indiana University. How would you evaluate your experience compared to your male colleagues?
There are a lot of struggles as a woman in academia. The easiest way to see that from a quantitative perspective is what's referred to as the ‘leaky pipeline’. Women are getting university degrees at much higher rates than men, and they're also getting into PhD programs at higher rates. But the difference declines between university and PhD. Women are not getting tenure and certainly not getting to full professors as much as men are. The stereotypical idea of a professor is an old white man. When students evaluate their professors, they're subconsciously evaluating them in comparison to that idealized form of what a professor is supposed to be. Women continue to get lower student evaluations than their male colleagues and even though we know these are biased indicators of performance, student evaluations still form part of tenure dossiers and influence decisions on remunerations. Women also tend to be tasked with much more service work than their male colleagues. There’s also the issues around parental leave and the question of how to juggle family and career. Family leave can create a problem for women, impacting their progression, whereas male counterparts don't have to take those leaves and are able to progress more quickly through the ranks. In academia, while men and women are now both able to take parental leave, women take parental leave to take care of their children whereas men use the time to boost their careers, doing more research and publishing, which enhances their prospects for getting tenure more quickly. These are some of the barriers women face across different career paths.
You mentioned a link between globalization and its impact on people. How can this new dispensation play a role in achieving gender equality, and mitigating social inequality?
Globalization offers many opportunities for the advancement of people. Particularly in lower income countries, the promise of globalization is that investments provide people new opportunities to work in industries that may not have existed in their countries before, or that are now in the process of expanding. The consequences of globalization in the poorest of the lower income countries has been the incorporation of their citizens into global supply chains, especially in the apparel industry. Most workers in the apparel industry are women, which has created many opportunities for them. There are, however, many challenges too in terms of fair wages and labor union suppression that cut against women being able to use those increased economic opportunities to develop sources of power, be it political or other forms of social power.
Additionally, globalization tends to create more inequality within countries because high skilled labor reaps more benefits than does lower skilled labor. If we're interested in helping women to gain more power in their communities, educating girls and women is crucial. If you have a society in which girls and women face structural barriers to education, and you also have an economic system in which skilled labor is benefited and unskilled labor is marginalized, that creates a dangerous situation for unskilled women. Combating these inequalities implies a combination of finding ways to increase educational opportunities for women and also providing new ways to protect workers’ abilities to unionize. This will provide leadership opportunities for women and pathways directly into political action and mobilization, which will lead to better overall outcomes for women and girls.
An increasing number of countries – Sweden, Mexico, and Canada to name a few – have adopted a feminist foreign policy or pledged to do so. How does international investment and finance contribute to achieving these policy goals?
In academic writing on feminist foreign policy, the emphasis lies mostly on security and conflict. One of the beneficial contributions of the economic side of foreign policy is that it broadens the scope of analysis beyond war and conflict. This allows for a deeper thinking about the international economy and can help broaden our scope of analysis in order for foreign policy to become more conducive to inclusivity of actors and consequences. War and conflict are not the end of foreign policy and they're in fact rare events, so we want to also understand the other parts of the global system influencing people’s daily lives. The challenge is that international finance itself has also been very male dominated. It is therefore important to think about how we can draw attention to the same issues of male dominance that come from a more conflict-oriented view of foreign policy through the international finance perspective.
What advice would you give to young women hoping to pursue a career in the area of international political economy?
The challenges of being a woman in foreign policy are about finding your way in and developing your pathway to influence foreign policy in a manner that you feel comfortable. The other component is learning how to feel confident and project this so that you are taken seriously. It is about learning how to be your own best advocate. A lot of that has to do with finding good mentors. The more that we have women achieving great success within foreign policy positions, the more mentors we have. This will in turn make it easier for future generations to learn how to think of themselves as foreign policy experts. My advice would be to find a mentor, or a group of mentors, and to cultivate this relationship as well as to start early to find internships that will build your resume.
