Robert Blair
Speaker
Arkadij Eisler Goldman Sachs Professor of Political Science and International and Public Affairs, Brown University.
Killing in the Amazon: Local Political Power and Violence Over Land and the Environment in Brazil
Date and Time
October 6, 2026
12:00PM - 01:15PM EDT
Location
Ash Center Seminar Room 225, Suite 200, 124 Mount Auburn Street
Join Robert Blair, Arkadij Eisler Goldman Sachs Professor of Political Science and International and Public Affairs at Brown University, for a Global Challenges to Democracy seminar.
Brazil is one of the world’s deadliest places for people defending themselves and their communities from territorial dispossession and environmental degradation, with the Amazon region accounting for the vast majority of these deaths. By combining a regression discontinuity design based on politician characteristics with an original survey reaching nearly 2,000 residents of some of the Amazon’s most remote settlements, this seminar will examine how extractive interests and local political power intersect to generate violence against these severely marginalized populations.
This event is presented in collaboration with the Harvard Kennedy School Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation
Event Details
This event will be recorded. Lunch will be served starting at 11:45 AM.
This event is open to Harvard ID holders only and registration is required.
Should you wish to inquire about an accommodation, please contact our events team at info@ash.harvard.edu prior to the event.
Bio
Robert Blair is the Arkadij Eisler Goldman Sachs Associate Professor of Political Science and International and Public Affairs at Brown University. His research focuses on international intervention and the consolidation of state authority after civil war, with an emphasis on rule of law and security institutions. He is director of the Civil Conflict and Democratic Erosion Policy Lab at Brown and co-founder and co-director of the Democratic Erosion Consortium, a multi-country initiative that addresses the causes and consequences of democratic deconsolidation through a combination of teaching, research, and civic and policy engagement.
He has conducted fieldwork on these and related topics in Colombia, Brazil, Liberia, Uganda, Côte d'Ivoire, and the US. He has also worked in various capacities for the UN Office of Rule of Law and Security Institutions, the US Central Intelligence Agency’s Political Instability Task Force, USAID, Freedom House, and the Small Arms Survey. He holds a B.A. from Brown and a Ph.D in political science from Yale University.
His research is published or forthcoming in Science, Nature Human Behaviour, American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, British Journal of Political Science, Quarterly Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, World Politics, International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, and other venues. His book, Peacekeeping, Policing, and the Rule of Law after Civil War, was published in 2020 with Cambridge University Press.