Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper aims at analyzing the recent changes in the US foreign doctrine and Brazil?s strategy of international relations under the new government that took power in January 2003. The U.S. and Brazil?s hemispheric agenda and strategy will be evaluated, zooming in on the regional trade agenda, particularly on the negotiation of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). How to reconcile the agendas of the two leading continental countries, in order to accommodate their individual interests and at the same time maintain the momentum, or at least not terminate, with the FTAA initiative? Is FTAA going to be a feasible second-best in the case of a protracted WTO Doha round? How to overcome the tendency of US hegemony in the Americas and address a truly cooperative proposal to the region? Can security matters be assessed alongside with economic issues? Will Brazil be willing to share an effective joint initiative to the region? Is the initial U.S. proposal, setting different liberalization speeds, a sign of hierarchical importance of groups of countries and an abandonment of regional multilateralism, or was it just a tactical move to press Brazil? How Mercosur fits into the FTAA project? Is there a role for regional international institutions, like the OAS, IADB, share the leadership in this process? How will other hemispheric actors, like Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Venezuela, Colombia, react to this dispute of power between Brazil and the US? The future shape of the Americas will be one of hemispheric cooperation and real integration, or will the North -South divide be deepened, due to insuficient economic development and the failure of democracies throughout the region?

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The imprisonment binge in the USA has produced the highest per capita incarceration rate, by far, of all nations. We have written a policy paper explaining this development and advocatng a principled policy response to it. Our goal is to reduce the prison population to what it was in the 1970s, before the binge began. First, we describe the precipitous rise in the use of incarceration over the past there decades and explain three “myths” that drove it. Then we outline a plan of action for reversing it. The guiding principle is desert-based sentencing – in general, only violent offenders should go to prison. Non-violent offenders would serve sentences in the community, and consensual acts currently regarded as criminal should instead be subject to non-criminal regulation. We believe that prison-based rehabilitation and treatment programs cannot be relied on to reduce prison populations or prevent recidivism, and instead embrace in-community sanctioning. Finally, we explain the cost savings and public safety results of decarceration. Copies of this report will be available and professors may take several copies for their classes.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: When Communist China entered the Korean War and engaged American troops in 1950, Chinese Americans became targets of anti-Communist hysteria. In 1953, the Chinese American community in San Francisco staged the first modern Chinese New Year Festival to defuse political persecution and mitigate the business downturn that accompanied the American embargo against China. The festival’s organizing committee proclaimed that the ethnic celebration was a way to fight Communist China -- wrongly accusing the Communist regime of eliminating many traditions, including the Chinese New Year. Moreover, the committee claimed that the festival defended American democratic practices because it was a demonstration of cultural diversity. In subsequent years, the organizing committee continued to situate the ethnic festival within the Cold War context and to insist on its right to preserve ethnic traditions.

Scholars have assumed that contemporary multiculturalism emerged in the 1970s, as a product of the civil rights movement. This paper, however, argues that in complex ways, Cold War politics helped to foster an early version of multiculturalism in the 1950s, one that took shape in the presentation of the New Year Festival. The paper builds on the work of scholars such as Elaine Tyler May and Mary Dudziak, who link U.S. Cold War foreign polices to domestic cultures, and extends their argument to the realm of multiculturalism. Using community and mainstream newspapers, festival publications, and oral history interviews, the paper traces how Chinese American leaders in 1953 and after positioned the festival as a vehicle for fighting the Cold War. They drew on Cold War rhetoric to equate freedom and democracy with the continuation of ethnic diversity. In their view, the festival represented a claim that American democracy allowed Chinese and European Americans alike the right to retain their ethnic heritages, putting those heritages on an equal footing. This bid for equal recognition, manifested in organizers’ rhetoric and the performance of the festival itself, anticipated later multiculturalism’s embrace of a pluralism founded on a recognition of non-European groups.

Significantly, the Chinese American leadership’s pluralist understanding reached and, at times, resonated with a set of non-Chinese American audiences. These included not just the tens of thousands of European Americans who attended the festival in the 1950s, but also San Francisco’s city government and the U.S. State Department. The city sought to market the festival to generate tourism. The State Department saw the celebration as an opportunity to publicize domestic racial equality in order to defuse criticism from the People’s Republic of China of the discrepancy between democratic ideology and the actual practice of race relations in the United States. Paradoxically, conservative Cold War politics intersected with the ambitions of festival organizers and the needs of the Chinese American community to create a public rhetoric of pluralism, one bearing a striking resemblance to the multiculturalism that would arise nearly two decades later on the left.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper presents preliminary findings from the National Survey of America’s College Students, a literacy assessment administered to over 1,800 graduating students in U.S. colleges and universities. The study provides detailed information about the literacy of America’s college students, examining the relationship between prose, document, and quantitative literacy and key measures of student characteristics and experiences in college. The results reveal that the literacy of college students is higher than the literacy of adults in the nation, but that students struggle most with quantitative literacy. Literacy also varied across students in 2- and 4- year institutions, by race/ethnicity, language background, parents’ education, participation in remedial courses, and by two measures of academic and social engagement.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The Jack and Jill of America organization was founded in 1938 by a group of concerned Black mothers. These women envisioned an organization that would provide their children with support in a society that viewed them as incapable and inferior. The goals of the organization are clearly outlined in their mission statement, and focus on issues related to cultural, educational and social programs. This paper will document the organization's history and discuss it's partnership with other organizations that believed in educating and supporting Black children. More importantly, the Jack and Jill of America organization encourages parental involvement and community service among its members. The paper will fully analyze the historical significance of an organization of this magnitude.