Today at Brown

Rebecca Weitz-Shapiro joined the Ivy League after high school and has not left it since.

She graduated from Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School summa cum laude in 2001, where she won the Larkin Memorial Prize for the best senior thesis in political economy. She also earned certificates in Spanish and Latin American studies.

At Columbia, Weitz-Shapiro earned graduate research fellowships from the National Science Foundation and research grants from the Institute for Latin American Studies, the Center for International Business Education. She was named a graduate fellow at the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy as well.

This academic fast track has not kept her from hands-on experience. Weitz-Shapiro’s research has brought her to Argentina during times of great turmoil.

During a semester abroad in 1999, the rate of exchange was one Argentine peso to one U.S. dollar and the people held a sense of optimism despite widespread graft. “There was a growing hope that the next administration would be cleaner,” she said.

Just two years later, when Weitz-Shapiro returned on a Fulbright fellowship, the Argentina she knew was upside-down. “It was the depth of the devaluation crisis,” she recalled. “There were four, five presidents in a week.”

As the economy plummeted, so did the citizens’ hopes for the future. “Argentina is known for being very cyclical in its economy,” Weitz-Shapiro said, “and unfortunately this fits the pattern.”

Local government in Argentina is a particular interest of Weitz-Shapiro, who will teach in both the Department of Political Science and at the Taubman Center for Public Policy. She is designing a seminar that looks at “machine politics” in Latin America, how governments give out services often based on some standing other than need. “Is your phone installation related to your attendance at the local democratic party meetings?” she said. Tammany Hall prefigured the Peronistas in Argentina and Mexico’s PRI party, she said.

Weitz-Shapiro says her interest in Latin America dates to her decision to study Spanish in secondary school, rather than one of the other languages offered.

As for the political science part, she said, “I grew up outside Washington, D.C., and my parents are both natives. Your local politics are also national.”