Congressional Representatives Research Articles

The Declining Appeal of Diasporic Connections: African American Organising for South Africa, Haiti and Rwanda*

Throughout the 20th century, African Americans challenged US foreign policies towards Africa and the Caribbean. In the first half of the century diasporic connections, particularly shared oppression and ancestral ties, triggered responses. When the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), an informal organisation of African American congressional representatives, became the key architects of African American foreign policy in the early 1970s, civil rights tactics were wedded to diasporic appeals to motivate African Americans to help shift US foreign policy towards South Africa and Haiti. Diasporic ties, however, worked against a campaign on behalf of Rwanda. This article argues that black globality, a broader framework that encompasses diasporic connections as only one of many possible ties between African Americans and Africa and African diasporic communities, will better serve the CBC in its goal to move African Americans to act on foreign policy issues concerning Africa and African diasporic communities in the 21st century.

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence

Environmental disasters as risk regulation catalysts? The role of Bhopal, Chernobyl, Exxon Valdez, Love Canal, and Three Mile Island in shaping U.S. environmental law

Unexpected events such as environmental catastrophes capture wide public attention. Soon after five major shocks—Three Mile Island, Love Canal, Bhopal, Chernobyl, and the Exxon Valdez oil spill—Congress voted on new risk regulation. This paper conducts an event study to test whether individual congressional representatives were “shocked” by these environmental disasters into increasing their probability of voting in favor of risk legislation. On average, representatives were less likely to vote in favor of bills tied to these five events. Significant heterogeneity in representatives’ responses to these shocks is documented. Liberal Northeast representatives were most likely to increase their pro-environment voting in the aftermath of these shocks.

Invención del sistema político mexicano: Forma de gobierno y gobernabilidad en el siglo XIX

Invención del sistema político mexicano: Forma de gobierno y gobernabilidad en el siglo XIX

Initiatives: New Voice for the Environment

Intelligent design or Darwinian evolution? Life created in seven days or evolving over billions of years? Religion and science have traditionally been at loggerheads over issues like these, but in January 2007 a group of scientists and evangelicals put aside their differences to battle environmental woes such as climate change and species extinction. Under the auspices of the Harvard Medical School Center for Health and the Global Environment and the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), scientists including biologist E.O. Wilson, climate researcher James Hansen, and botanist Peter Raven have joined forces with evangelical leaders to form a new group to educate law makers and the public about global environmental threats. The coalition grew out of a lunchtime conversation between Eric Chivian, director of the Harvard center, and Richard Cizik, vice president for governmental affairs of the NAE, in which they realized that scientists and evangelicals shared a deep concern about the planet’s future and felt a moral obligation to act. “Whether you believe life was created in a millisecond or over three and a half billion years—that wasn’t the issue,” says Chivian. “The issue was that life on Earth is imperiled, and that we had to do something about it together.” The result was a retreat for 28 leading scientists and evangelicals in late November 2006, out of which the coalition was born. Cizik says the NAE represents more than 45,000 U.S. churches with more than 30 million members who will now be further encouraged to work on environmental issues. Members of the coalition have already begun meeting with congressional representatives. The churches themselves are organizing various education efforts to mobilize their congregations. For example, a group of pastors are working on a packet that will be distributed to NAE member churches, which will include information such as ten things anyone can do to take care of the environment. The coalition “makes perfect sense,” says Ben Campbell, project director for the Conservation International Faith-Based Initiative, which works cooperatively with religious groups to achieve conservation goals in countries including Columbia, Tibet, and Indonesia: “[Harvard] provides the background science and research, and [the evangelicals] present it in a context that makes sense from a religious standpoint.” As Cizik puts it, “We cannot love our neighbor if we allow the consequences of climate change, pollution, habitat destruction, species extinction, and the spread of human infection diseases to go unabated.” The evangelical group’s decision to battle climate change has met with some internal opposition from two dozen of the movement’s more conservative Christian leaders, who wrote the NAE in early March that environmental issues would take away from the group’s other work on core moral issues, such as abortion. But at a meeting later in the month the NAE board of directors reaffirmed the group’s stance on environmental issues.

MOON-HO JUNG. Coolies and Cane: Race, Labor, and Sugar in the Age of Emancipation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 2006. Pp. x, 275. $48.95

In this important and well-researched work, Moon-Ho Jung argues that southern sugar planters looked to Asian “coolies” to solve their labor problems after the Civil War. Early reports from the Caribbean suggested that these Asians were docile and would not press for things like American citizenship. Many planters surmised that coolies could not be worse than slaves, those “impudent” and disloyal workers who went “on strike” soon after the Civil War began, and who would need new forms of discipline and competition after emancipation. Americans ridiculed British use of Asian laborers on their newly “emancipated” colonial possessions as replacing one form of slavery with another. But were these coolies in fact slaves, or were they free migrants working as “apprentices” in the British West Indies or Cuba? There were stories of Chinese men who came freely to work, men who married white women and lived and mixed with white people; but there were also stories of kidnapping, deception, and corporal punishment swirling around “Caribbean coolieism.” After 1860, Congressional representatives from the West would insist this was slavery. In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed “An Act to Prohibit the ‘Coolie Trade,’” and Jung insists that this was “the last of America's slave trade laws, unambiguously framed as such by Republican legislators” (p. 37).

The Vernon Walters Pilot Scholarship Program: A Proposal to Change How the US Intelligence Community Recruits Near-Native Speakers of Critical Languages

In response to the national need for speakers of critical languages,such as those spoken in the Middle East and Asia, I propose that the Intelligence Community start a pilot program, through the office of the Director of National Intelligence, to change how it recruits and hires these speakers. the paper describes the current process, proposes a pilot, and outlines a vision of what a more comprehensive approach could look like. The pilot involves creating a relationship with Congressional representatives and local governmental representatives as well as selected Community Colleges. The advantages of these relationships could be better relationships with local immigrant communities and risk mitigation in the hiring process. This paper was awarded one of the ODNI Galileo prizes in 2005 and it has been reviewed before publication by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Software Carpentry

I do have someone I want to sue - the people who make laptop batteries. Everything about laptop batteries is a lie. They don't last as long as claimed unless you're doing nothing but running a blank screensaver on a machine that isn't on the Internet. Two days after you get the laptop, of course, it doesn't even do that. Because they run down so quickly when you do anything real, you tend to keep the laptop plugged in-after you do that for a year, you own an expensive paperweight. And a new battery is expensive. That's why I have four laptops with bad batteries. Recently, some people who wanted a wall on the border got a clever idea: sending their congressional representatives a brick to make their point. Here's my idea: send a dead laptop battery to your congressional representatives. Ask them if it gives 'em a charge. This morning's paper had a story about problems with these batteries bursting into flames in untoward places such as overhead luggage compartments. So sending your battery to your congressman has a side benefit in that it transfers your risk to the government

Preaching to the Choir

Williams continuedfrom previous page CD possess interesting—while not direct—parallels with the stories. Further, the music, like the stories, makes it all the more confounding why I can't say "Richard Bürgin" at the local Barnes and Noble and watch all the employees and customers light up. In sum, The Identity Club—book and CD—is the work of an incredibly talented artist. Let's just hope that those with enough money to buy the book will find themselves so enamored ofthe work within that they'll want to enter Richard Burgin's world over and over again. Tom Williams edits Arkansas Review: A Journal of Delta Studies. Preaching to the Choir Fred Shochet Dear President Bush Cindy Sheehan Introduction by Howard Zinn City Lights http://www.citylights.com 164 pages; paper, $9.95 Cindy Sheehan's life ended and began anew on April 4, 2004, when her son, Casey, died five days into his Iraqi-War deployment. It ended because his death created an emotional and irreplaceable chasm in Sheehan's soul. It began because it drove Sheehan to new activism: to fight America's involvement in the Iraqi War. Since her rebirth, Sheehan has traveled nationally and internationally to gain support. She has met with congressional representatives and senators, she has led demonstrations and sit-ins, and she has established Gold Star Families for Peace, an organization offamily members who have lost loved ones in Iraq. Now, through Dear President Bush, Sheehan expands her efforts to print. She hopes to convert neutrals and opponents to her point ofview: to make them anti Iraqi-War activists. "Someone has to make George [Bush] face his failures and change his ways," she says. Sheehan's book is a collection of arguments presented in an assortment of chapter settings. The first and longest chapter is editor Greg Ruggiero's interview of Sheehan, where she barges in with pointed daggers. Bush and his administration are "[w]arprofiteers [and] are our true enemies." Bush's "preemptive strikes" are misguided and pad the pockets ofthe president and his administration pals. Bush promised to find weapons ofmass destruction in Iraq, but "there are none, and were none. The Downing Street memos have proven that he knew months before the invasion that Saddam Hussein didn't have weapons of mass destruction." The Downing Street memos purport to be minutes of a July 2002 high-level meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other high-ranking British officials. Sheehan's endnotes direct readers to a web site offering the memos and annotated analyses. More, Sheehan adds, "we need to be more fair with policies that way too heavily favor Israel," and she asks and then answers her own questions: '"What noble cause did Casey die for? Was it freedom and democracy?' Bullshit. He died for oil. He died to make Bush's friends richer." Finally, near the end of the interview, Sheehan argues for diplomacy and other "peaceful means" to solve grievances and spare the lives of American soldiers and innocent Iraqi citizens. Sheehan's arguments are well intended, but she hampers her purpose with unsubstantiated assertions and contradictory conclusions. Her allegations that Bush and his "cronies" profit financially from the Iraqi War lack both evidence and logic. Are we to believe that America's congressional representatives and senators are so gullible as to continue funding a war fought to fill the pockets of Bush and his pals? It is a doubtful proposition that challenges Sheehan's credibility. And, does US policy really tilt unfairly to Israel? Sheehan says we are in this war because of oil, but why, then, would we adopt a policy that favors Israel and agitates Arab oil producing countries? The logic contradicts itself, and Sheehan presents no evidence to support her allegations. Moreover, Sheehan reminds us that Bush said Iraq was pursuing a program to develop weapons ofmass destruction, an agenda that was the underpinning of Bush's decision to invade. The United Nations includes chemical and biological weapons along with nuclear weapons in its definition ofweapons ofmass destruction, and there is no doubt that Iraq possessed and used chemical weapons against its Kurdish citizens and in its war against...

Dozens of Psychiatrists Meet With Federal Lawmakers

Dozens of Psychiatrists Meet With Federal Lawmakers

The End of Wilderness: Conflict and Defeat of Wilderness in the Grand Canyon

AbstractIn the early 1970s, Grand Canyon National Park intended to designate its land to “Wilderness,” including the controversial Colorado River corridor. However, by the end of the 1970s the potential for Wilderness designation was off the table, and would never seriously return for genuine consideration. Using Schattschneider's model of conflict, we explain how the organization of this conflict privileges the “causal story” of Wilderness opponents, and therefore why the canyon is not designated. It is our contention that members of Congress will not stand forward to support Wilderness designations without simultaneously providing benefits for extractive land use because (1) congressional representatives are more penalized for supporting than opposing Wilderness designations, (2) Wilderness advocacy groups do not pressure congressional delegates as firmly as opposition groups, and (3) key local congressional members are not likely to see Wilderness as a salient issue worth the risk of negative exposure. If these findings hold, the implication is that we may have reached the end of significant Wilderness designations in highly visible areas, unless critical aspects in land use conflict change.

White Voters, Black Representatives, and Candidates of Choice

The challenge of minority representation is an important area of public policy that relies heavily on the work of political scientists. Minority voting rights in the United States encompasses not just access to the ballot, but also guarantees that the ballot has meaning in areas with historic discrimination. In this paper we explore the nomination and election of African-American congressional representatives, with an emphasis on the unsuccessful primary re-nomination fight of Cynthia McKinney. Relying on both precinct level racial participation data and also unique, voter-level information on the partisanship of all white primary participants, we ascertain the extent to which the African-American incumbent’s loss to an African-American challenger was a product of strategic voting by white Republicans under Georgia’s open primary law. We also draw conclusions about the implications of such strategic white voting for the election of African-American candidates of choice, and discuss the implications of those conclusions for the interpretation of section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

Ivy and Industry: Business and the Making of the American University, 1880-1980 (review)

Reviewed by: Ivy and Industry: Business and the Making of the American University, 1880–1980 Albert H. Teich (bio) Ivy and Industry: Business and the Making of the American University, 1880–1980. By Christopher Newfield. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2003. Pp. 290. $32.95. Twenty-first-century research universities are widely viewed as engines of economic growth for their communities, regions, and nations. Virtually all top research universities and most aspiring institutions have technology-transfer and licensing offices whose function is to exploit the results of their faculty's research in the commercial arena. Many have research parks intended to cultivate start-up companies and/or attract existing businesses. A growing number of universities employ lobbyists to persuade congressional representatives to appropriate funds directly to them, usually with the expectation that such "pork barrel" appropriations will bring economic benefits to their states or districts. Much has been written on the commercialization of academic research, especially since the passage of the Bayh-Dole Act in 1980. This law, which allowed universities to take ownership of patents arising from federally sponsored research, is widely regarded as a watershed in university-industry relations. Christopher Newfield's Ivy and Industry, which looks at the development of those relations in the century before Bayh-Dole, puts their [End Page 852] recent evolution in a useful long-term perspective. An English professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Newfield seems an unlikely writer to address this subject; his previous works include books titled The Emerson Effect: Individualism and Submission in America (1996) and Mapping Multiculturalism (1996). His analysis here is enriched, however, by his personal experience at Reed College, Cornell, and Rice, as well as Santa Barbara. Newfield sees research universities as having been a central component of the U.S. industrial system since the post–Civil War era. They supplied knowledge and managers for the emerging industrial economy. At the same time, they provided a home for "non-utilitarian knowledge" and curiosity-driven research. And they gave the professional middle class a humanistic perspective on themselves and society. A key aspect of Newfield's book, one that differentiates it from others on this subject, is its focus on what he calls "this double-edged industrial role." The author examines the ways in which corporate styles of management and business considerations have permeated the university. He examines the internal workings of the university, which he sees as subject to a dual management system—a corporate-style business side that runs the institution and sets policy, and an academic side controlled by the faculty. While some observers term this "shared governance," Newfield prefers to call it "divided governance," emphasizing the limits on the ability of the faculty to wield decision-making authority. In his view, the system serves the science faculty (in which individual academic entrepreneurs thrive) better than the humanities faculty, which he sees as beset by bureaucracy, vulnerable to business influences, and limited in its freedom of action. Nonetheless, he views the university as permanently dependent on humanism and he traces the response of humanists to the growing domination of the university by business. Newfield carries his analysis into the present, examining the impact of increased government interest in and support for stronger ties between universities and industry. This interest is a result of pressures from policymakers for practical results (i.e., economic benefits, jobs, international competitiveness) from the billions of federal dollars that are spent each year on academic research. He sees difficult challenges in these demands: the need for university research to maintain its independence in the face of commercial pressures; the need to reconcile the university's two missions of economic and personal development; and the need for universities to change as faculties and student bodies become increasingly diverse. This is not a book for policy wonks. It prescribes no courses of action, no approaches to solving the problems it identifies. But it is a provocative work. It offers humanists a way to think about the dilemmas their disciplines face in an increasingly technological environment. And it offers scientists, [End Page 853] technologists, and historians of science and technology an opportunity to see their domains from a perspective...

The Southern Imposition: Congress and Labor in the New Deal and Fair Deal

In this article, we will probe two distinct historical questions. First, we explore why congressional representatives from the South, who had generally supported the Democratic Party on labor issues during the 1930s, joined with Republicans to oppose the party's pro-labor orientation in the 1940s. We also examine why the class-based union movement that mobilized so assertively after the passage of the Wagner Act in 1935 became so cramped and pragmatic by the early 1950s. These puzzles, we believe, are closely related. Our explanation for why labor's horizons, topography, and prospects constricted to workplace issues, to some segments of the working population, and to limited geographic areas by the end of the Truman years points to how southern Democrats shaped the main institutions produced by New Deal and Fair Deal labor legislation.

Bolivia's Children's Parliament: Bringing Participation to the National Stage

Children, Youth and Environments 15(2), 2005 Bolivia’s Children’s Parliament: Bringing Participation to the National Stage Jayashri Sarkar Blanca Mendoza1 Plan International Bolivia Citation: Sarkar, Jayashri and Blanca Mendoza. (2005). “Bolivia’s Children’s Parliament: Bringing Participation to the National Stage.” Children, Youth and Environments 15(2): 227-244. Comment on This Article Abstract The Bolivian Children’s Parliament experience is a concrete model of children’s participation that holds value for the child and adolescent participants themselves, and does so in a public way. Children hold their parliamentary sessions in the National Congress in the very seats of their adult congressional representatives, thus projecting a clear image of the participation of children and adolescents at a national level. Fueled by the signing of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, this model has joined children, adolescents, and governmental and nongovernmental institutions in realizing children’s right to participate in issues that affect their lives at a national level. As a relatively new experience, there is much to be learned in terms of processes for the Parliament and addressing the difficulty of local replication given the cultural diversity and scattered population of the country. Nonetheless, this is a promising practice in the solidification of democracy in Bolivia. Keywords: participation, governance, children's rights, Bolivia© 2005 Children, Youth and Environments Bolivia’s Children’s Parliament: Bringing Participation to the National Stage 228 The Convention Paves the Way The Convention on the Rights of the Child is heralded as the UN Convention that most quickly galvanized widespread international support, despite differences in cultural practices and beliefs. Bolivia signed on to the Convention in 1990, and subsequently took several legislative actions to solidify the rights of children throughout the country, including the Law for the Minor (1992) which translated rights outlined in the Convention into Bolivian law, and the creation of Child Protection Centers (1996), which provide a government institution in each municipality to oversee child protection issues. The Convention establishes four distinct areas of children’s rights: survival, development, protection, and participation. Among these rights, the first three areas are most often addressed by legislation and the establishment of Children’s Protection offices. The fourth area, participation, is often forgotten. The right of participation specifies that children should be heard and involved in decisions that affect their lives in accordance with their age and maturity (UNCRC 1989). The Children’s Parliament experience in Bolivia brings national attention to children’s right to participate. This is a concrete model of children’s participation that not only holds value for the child and adolescent participants themselves, but does so in a public way. Children hold their parliament sessions in the national congress in the very seats of their adult congressional representatives, thus projecting a clear image of the participation of children and adolescents at a national level. The participation of children and adolescents in the Children’s Parliament helps to create the conditions through which they can develop their own judgment and become better positioned to make valuable contributions to society over the long term. In a country in which the experience of democracy is quite new and—like in all countries—not perfect, participation in the Children’s Parliament gives the children and adolescents a chance to experience the democratic process first hand and draw their own lessons from this practice. This not only makes them better legislators in their own parliament, but also prepares them as citizens within a democratic society to contribute to the solidification of democratic practices. Democracies do not construct themselves, but depend upon each citizen’s ability to reason, question and act within the framework democracies define. In short, the habits of democracy must be formed and honored for a nation to move forward in the best interest of all its citizens. These habits require not only minimum levels of education and understanding, but also trust, compassion, solidarity, and peace; these convictions and attitudes can be built from concrete experiences in which shared values contribute to agreed upon outcomes. The Children’s Parliament is meant to be such an experience, helping in a small way to provide the opportunity for young people to...

D1. Fourteen U.S. Representatives, Letter to the Slated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Condemning Presbyterian Divestment Resolution, Washington, DC, 13 September 2004 (excerpts)

On 2 July, the 216th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Assembly——the denomination's highest policy-making body, which meets annually——passed the ““Resolution on Israel and Palestine (2004),”” one paragraph of which called upon the church to ““initiate the process”” of selective divestment of stock in corporations within its $$8 billion portfolio that profit from the Israeli occupation. The decision, which in practical terms means only that the church's Committee on Mission Responsibility Through Investment (MRTI) will begin studying the issue, caused great concern among American Jewish organizations as a possible precedent among mainstream Protestant churches, especially in light of the key role of divestment in the strategy used by U.S. churches in the struggle against South African apartheid in the 1970s and 1980. The 216th General Assembly also voted to condemn Israel's construction of the ““security wall”” in the West Bank and to disavow Christian Zionism as a legitimate theological stance.The following letter deploring the Presbyterian Church's initiative was sent to Rev. Clifton Kirpatrick, head of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, by fourteen congressional representatives led by Howard L. Berman (D-CA). The other signatories are Gary Ackerman (D-NY), Roy Blount (R-MO), Eric Cantor (R-VA), Tom Feeney (R-FL), Barney Frank (D-MA), Steny Hoyer (D-MD), Mark Steven Kirk (R-IL), John Lewis (D-GA), John Linder (R-GA), Deborah Pryce (R-OH), Linda Sanchez (D-CA), Lamar Smith (R-TX), and Henry Waxman (D-CA). Their letter is available at www.pcusa.org.

Always Famous

Always Famous

Congressional Web Sites and Their Potential for Public Dialogue

The Internet has emerged as one way that organizations can engage their publics in dialogue. The purpose of this article is to explore Congressional Web sites as spaces for government-constituent dialogue. An analysis of Congressional Web sites (N = 100) and interviews with Congressional offices (N = 32) shows that Congressional representatives recognize the value of the Internet and the World Wide Web for communicating with constituents. However, Congressional Web sites do not appear to be facilitating dialogue between elected officials and their constituents. Interviews with legislative aides responsible for the creation and maintenance of Congressional Web sites suggest that elected officials are using their Web sites primarily as information dissemination tools. The implications for organizational communication scholars, citizens, and government officials as they consider the dialogic capacity of a mediated governmental environment are discussed.

A Tale of Three Discourses: Doing Action Research in a Research Methods Class

This article tells the tale of a collaborative research project between a graduate research methods course in action research, and an urban community grassroots environmental group. In order to give the students the opportunity to do part of an action research project, the instructor (the author) approached the leaders of the grassroots group and asked if they would like the class to undertake research that would be of interest to them. The grassroots group is concerned that toxic releases from nearby facilities are causing detrimental health effects to area residents, and asked that the class gather and analyze health data that would speak to their concerns. The results of the research generated media attention and angered a congressional representative, who attempted to discredit the research and to get the university to disavow it. The results of this saga are used to illustrate what happens when the boundaries between the discourses of science, politics, and education become porous, and how interpretations of scientific research are shaped by the discourses in which they are used.

PARLIAMENTARY OVERSIGHT OF WTO RULE-MAKING:: THE POLITICAL, NORMATIVE, AND PRACTICAL CONTEXTS

This article addresses the issue of parliamentary oversight of WTO rule-making at the national and international levels. Parliamentarians’ views of alternative mechanisms for ensuring parliamentary control of the WTO tend to vary by jurisdiction. From a positive perspective, these views reflect power structures at the national, regional, and international levels, as well as parliamentarians’ experiences with supranational governance institutions. European political representatives are more accustomed to shared supranational governance institutions. They tend to propose expansion and adaptation of the EU model to address global governance challenges. US congressional representatives, in contrast, tend to be wary of how US ‘sovereignty’ and US power can be constrained through the WTO or any other global governance regime. They tend to oppose adding a parliamentary dimension. From a normative perspective, in order to meaningfully discuss WTO accountability we need a conceptual framework that permits us to assess the tradeoffs between different mechanisms for ensuring oversight, including parliamentary oversight, of the WTO. This article adopts a comparative institutional one. The article addresses the policy arguments for and against the addition of such a parliamentary dimension to the WTO and examines some of the many institutional challenges that would arise. The article maintains that the creation of a WTO parliamentary body should be judged in terms of its impact on the participation of less powerful stakeholders and, in particular of developing countries and their constituents, relative to other institutional alternatives.