| Prolific scholar studies Europe’s united future BY SALLY ACHARYA
Photo by Jeff Watts
Michelle Egan receives the Career Center’s Internship Faculty of the Month award from Lochlann Boyle.
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At a family wedding years ago in southern Ireland, Michelle Egan was being introduced to a stranger. She can’t recall the man’s name anymore, but she still recalls his political party. “This is so-and-so,” she was told as they met, and then, in the same breath, “he’s Fine Gael.” The way politics permeated everyday life among her Irish relatives made a lasting impression on the half-Irish, half-British Egan. Going on to study political science, she is now one of only a handful of Jean Monnet Professors of European Integration in the United States, a chair funded largely by grants from the European Commission and awarded to faculty studying the complexities of the evolving European Union. It may seem like a dry subject: trade barriers, passport issues, the mathematical questions of economics. Forty years ago, those things would indeed have been the focus of discussion. But Europe, and the discussion about its increased unification, is changing. “This has evolved from being about interstate commerce to issues that really affect society,” Egan says. Can a nation like Ireland retain its law against abortion under European human rights laws? Is it still possible for France to have a quota to protect its film industry? How does the growing interstate cooperation on terrorism affect the rights of individuals? To study European integration is to study some of the most contentious issues in the world today. The aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks and the global focus on counterterrorism has spurred the process of European integration even further. There is now a European arrest warrant, so that it would be possible for a Spanish judge to issue a warrant for a Frenchman who has fled to Belgium and have him extradited and tried in Spain. Such changes raise the same sort of issues about individual rights in Europe as the Patriot Act does in the United States. “Europe has a large agenda on its plate,” says the School of International Service professor. There is a constitution to be ratified, though Britain and France may be holdouts. Borders have changed. And it has to deal with the next round of enlargements, including the Balkans and Turkey, which potentially create new borders with states that aren’t as stable. The possibility of E.U. membership has been one of the two most powerful tools in European foreign policy, Egan says. The European Union is also the largest foreign aid donor in the world. “That,” she says, “is it’s foreign policy.” While the United States wields the stick of military might, Europe prefers to hold out “carrots” in the form of a hope of E.U. membership or large dollops of development aid. The E.U. courts are increasingly dealing with human rights and social issues, although the Europe-wide nature of their decisions are somewhat masked because the decisions are passed down to the national courts and formally issued from there, she says. So far, Ireland has been permitted to retain its laws against abortion, but largely because E.U. judges cleverly ducked the question in a recent case, Egan says. France’s film quotas have been upheld on the grounds of cultural and linguistic preservation. But such questions will keep rising as Europe increasingly integrates, she says. Egan is a prolific author and scholar whose most recent book is Creating a Transatlantic Marketplace: Public Policies and Business Strategies, published last year. In 2001 came Constructing a European Market: Standards, Regulation and Governance. She takes a comparative approach in her upcoming book Single Markets: Economic Integration in Europe and the U.S, which will come out in 2006. Prior to the Civil War, she notes, the United States was spoken of as “these United States.” It would face many of the same issues in its economic integration that Europe faces today. Both were enlarging territory, had to address whether to treat old and new states the same, and dealt with issues of war, the divisions of war, and postwar reconstruction. Egan racks up awards and grants as prolifically as she writes books. She was the SIS Outstanding Teacher for 1999–2000, has won awards for curriculum development and internship advising, landed a Jean Monnet Fellowship in 1998 for study in Florence, and won a German Marshall Fund research fellowship in 2001–2002. Egan has another demanding role as well, and it came about because of her accent. When she was still new on the faculty, she was speaking at an SIS function. “I spoke with a British accent six years ago. I really don’t anymore,” she explains in a voice that bears only a trace of its origins—although Egan, raised in the Irish enclave of Liverpool, can still break into a perfect Liverpool dialect on call. Afterwards she was asked if, being British and all, she would like to serve as AU’s faculty coordinator for the Mitchell and Marshall Fellowship to the United Kingdom and Ireland, as well as other scholarships. Working with the Office of Merit Awards and Scholars in the Career Center, she has helped students gain scholarships and fellowship to schools that have included the University of Sussex and London School of Economics. “I sort of fell into it,” she says, but the work has become a passion for her. Along with her writing, teaching, and advising, Egan is the busy mother of two children, whose artwork decorates her office walls. On her desk, along with papers and books, is a plastic Polly Pocket bus. It was left behind by her 5-year-old daughter, whose photo hangs alongside the picture of Egan’s 18-month-old son. Her son is an Irish Declan. Her daughter’s name is a regally British Georgina. European integration, it seems, is something that touches every aspect of Egan’s life. |
