The Ethical Policy Maker (SPI 368)

Princeton School of Public and International Affairs | Spring 2023, Fall 2024, Spring 2026

How do we evaluate whether a particular public policy is good or bad? Which goals should public policies serve? From Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) to the World Health Organization's pandemic treaty, public policies cannot be properly understood without exploring the political and moral values that underpin them. Each week in this seminar pairs a domestic or international public policy with relevant scholarship in ethics to better understand what is at stake. Students produce two short response papers on weekly topics of their choosing.

This course counts toward the SPIA Ethics core requirement and the Computing, Society and Policy minor. It is also open to community auditors through Princeton's Community Auditing Program.

Junior Research Seminar on Immigration and Refugee Policy (SPI 300 / SPI 403 / SPI 404)

Princeton School of Public and International Affairs | Regularly offered

This small-group research seminar, required for SPIA juniors, introduces students to the tools, methods, and interpretive frameworks for policy research and writing in the area of immigration and refugee policy. Students complete research design projects and engage with primary and secondary sources across law, political science, sociology, and ethics. Past seminar themes have included:

• Migration and Refugees in International Perspective
• Mobility and Immigration during the COVID-19 Pandemic
• Global Governance
• US Immigration Policy
• Policy Research on Immigration in the US and EU

Junior Policy Task Force: The European Refugee Crisis, Four Years On (WWS 401g)

Princeton School of Public and International Affairs | Fall 2019

This policy task force examined domestic and regional policy challenges arising from the European refugee crisis. Working collaboratively, students produced a policy-oriented report with concrete recommendations for policymakers. A student who served as senior commissioner for this task force subsequently won a Rhodes Scholarship.

Guest Lectures

Dr. Buckinx has contributed guest lectures in several Princeton courses across departments, including:

• SPI 501 — The Politics of Public Policy (graduate core course)
• ENE/MAE/GEO 308 — Engineering the Climate: Technical and Policy Challenges (seminars on climate engineering governance)
• ENV 326 — Investigating an Ethos of Sustainability at Princeton

Teaching at Other Institutions

Prior to returning to Princeton, Dr. Buckinx taught at several universities in Europe and North America:

• University of California, San Diego — Green Political Thought; Global Justice: Theory and Action; Migration and Borders
• Goethe University Frankfurt — The Capabilities Approach (graduate seminar, co-taught)
• Brown University — State Sovereignty and International Law; Global Governance
• University of Edinburgh — Social Identity and Social Conflict; Human Rights: Theory and Practice

Student Mentorship and Advising

Dr. Buckinx has supervised more than twelve Princeton senior theses on topics including immigration detention in France, Swedish repatriation policy, populism in Germany and Austria, North Korean defectors in South Korea, South African refugee policy, and anti-Asian discrimination during COVID-19. She has also served as an external PhD advisor at the University of Geneva.

She served on Princeton SPIA's Undergraduate Advising Committee from 2020 to 2022, and her recommendation letters have supported students winning competitive awards including the Sachs Scholarship (2025) and the Rhodes Scholarship (2019).

The Ethics of Policy Fellowship Program

In addition to her formal courses, Dr. Buckinx founded and directs the LISD Ethics of Policy Fellowship Program, a co-curricular program that selects a competitive cohort of Princeton students each year to produce ethically grounded policy briefs on migration and the environment. The program culminates in a public workshop each spring. 

The inaugural volume of student policy briefs, Ethics in Policy: Student Policy Briefs on Immigration and the Environment, Volume 1, was published by LISD in December 2025.