Interviews Professor Rebecca Wolfe
March 02, 2025

With President Trump severely cutting programs at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the agency now falls under the purview of the US Department of State, The Center Square reports. In this conversation, Professor Rebecca Wolfe takes center stage, leveraging her experience in international development to argue for the preservation of USAID. Arguing for the organization's independence, she says,

"They [other departments] don’t have the experience to run these very complicated programs. How do you actually run a huge operation of delivering food, or cash, or medicine to places in insecure areas?...There’s all this operational experience that will get lost."

Wolfe continues,

"I’m not saying there weren’t programs that weren’t effective – we make mistakes, everyone does – but I’ve been with programs that have failed, and I’ve been with some really good programs. Things are caught as well. And so the amount of fraud that these people are talking about is significantly less than what is being portrayed.”

Read the full article here

Rebecca Wolfe
Faculty Spotlight

Rebecca Wolfe
Senior Lecturer and Executive Director of International Policy & Development

Dr. Rebecca J. Wolfe is a leading expert on political violence, conflict and violent extremism. She is a Senior Lecturer at the Harris School for Public Policy at the University of Chicago, where she also is an associate at the Pearson Institute for the Study and Resolution of Global Conflicts....