Simons Chair in International Law and Human Security

The Simons Chair in International Law and Human Security was established in 2006 thanks to a generous contribution from Jennifer Allen Simons (through her Simons Foundation) to Simon Fraser University. The Chair, which is housed in the School for International Studies, is intended to promote interdisciplinary research and programming focused on the intersection of politics, law and human security, broadly defined.

Jeffrey T. Checkel, the current holder of the Simons Chair, is a political scientist and international-relations specialist. An American who was educated at MIT (PhD in Defence and Arms Control Studies, 1991), he spent more than a decade living and working in Europe before coming to SFU in late 2008. Originally trained as a physicist and then a Sovietologist (!) – his first book was an exploration of the ideational dynamics that led to the unexpectedly peaceful end of the Cold War – Checkel has more recently studied a very different type of peaceful change: the development of the European Union and of a possible European identity.

At SFU, Professor Checkel is pursuing three projects. A first is an international collaboration entitled ‘Mobilizing Across Borders: Transnational Mechanisms of Civil War.’ Its starting point is the fact that civil wars rarely play out within the borders of one state; they have international and transnational dimensions that must be studied if we are to craft better policy and theory. A second project – ‘The More the Better? Human Rights Law in a Changing Europe’ – asks if the ever-growing amount of human-rights law at the regional and international levels is actually such a good thing. Taking the case of Europe, Checkel explores the implications – good and bad – of the European Union’s recent and forceful move into the area of fundamental rights.

A final project reflects a longer-term passion and interest of Checkel’s – to overcome the hyper-specialization, the intra- and inter-disciplinary turf wars and groupthink that so often characterize academic scholarship. While it may seem painfully obvious that we learn more about the world by pooling our common knowledge and insights, the reality is often quite different. To further develop such thoughts, Checkel is conducting a net assessment of theoretical bridge-building in international studies – to be published in the second edition of the Sage Handbook of International Relations – and co-editing a volume for Cambridge University Press on methodological pluralism and process tracing.

Beyond his own research, Professor Checkel views the Simons Chair as an important vehicle for outreach and institutional development. Thus, the Chair sponsors a seminar series – the Simons Series in the Social Dynamics of Peace and Conflict – that brings leading scholars to the SFU campus; organizes and runs a research colloquium at SIS that promotes academic excellence and heightened research productivity within the School; and cooperates actively with other institutions, including the Centre of International Relations at UBC, the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO), and the Otto Suhr Institute at Free University Berlin.

Aside from his scholarly pursuits, Checkel is an avid mountain climber and lover of all things Swiss, including a seemingly inexplicable love for cows – as visitors to his office will quickly notice!