Zuhad Hai
Zuhad Hai is a Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science at Stanford University studying international relations and political economy.
In his dissertation, Zuhad studies how societies adjust to new technologies and scientific discoveries in a globalized world. One part of his dissertation looks at how societies view open markets when these markets enable new technologies from abroad to make large groups of producers obsolete. According to conventional wisdom, re-employing obsolete producers into comparative advantage sectors will reduce demands for protectionism. By contrast, he argues that adjustments that move producers into a booming industry might fail if they deprive producers of institutional advantages or social status specific to the declining industry. Focusing on the effect of the Industrial Revolution on South Asia, he shows how the adjustment from manufacturing to agriculture mobilized producers into an anti-imperialist coalition for protectionism.
In another set of projects, Zuhad studies how scientific consensus informs international environmental cooperation on issues such as climate change. This set of projects looks at international organizations and domestic climate politics to show how new scientific knowledge affects the interests and political strategies of powerful actors in environmental politics.
Zuhad's research is published or forthcoming in the Journal of Politics and Science Advances. He is affiliated with the Center for South Asia and the Conflict and Polarization Initiative at Stanford. He has also received generous funding from the Center for South Asia at Stanford, the Stanford Institute for Research in the Social Sciences, the King Center for Global Development, and the Princeton Environmental Institute.
Before his Ph.D., Zuhad worked as a full-time pre-doc at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Before that, he obtained an MA in International Relations from the University of Chicago, and a BA in Mathematics and Economics from Grinnell College.
