We're grateful that Garrison Keillor (English '69) was willing to spend an entire day talking to CLA students and translating what he heard into our cover story. What a bonanza of intellect, interests, and experiences they brought to the interviews!

Reading the story, you may find that some aspects of the student experience have changed, but others will remind you of your own--especially the desire to turn ones' own potential into a bright future.

One obvious change is of great concern: the cost of this great educational adventure. In 1960, CLA tuition was about $210 annually ($2,200 in today's dollars), and most students commuted to campus. Today, the typical cost for a Minnesota resident is $22,000, including tuition, room, and board. In earlier decades, students could work part-time and cover the lion's share of the bill. Today they would have to work 69 hours a week at minimum wage, year-round--an impossible scenario.

What kind of difference can a scholarship make? Here's what one grateful B.F.A. alumna said:

"With only one of my parents working, and my father laid off and searching constantly for work, many Federal Financial Aid options still weren't a possibility. We had 'just enough' not to qualify, even though I knew I'd be in big trouble without help. Scholarship support got me to the U, and freed me up to work less and focus more on my studies and training. And I left college with little to no debt (an incredible blessing for a girl who will forever be living--happily--on a 'starving artist's' budget!)."

Knowing that this student spoke for so many students whose families simply cannot afford rising tuition costs, I wondered: What about them? So I calculated how much money CLA would need to give awards (not full rides) to every student who meets our criteria of both merit and financial need.

The numbers are sobering. We would need $14 million in cash annually to award scholarships to every student with significant need.

In 2008, we awarded approximately $3.9 million in scholarship and fellowship support; in 2009, with your help, we increased that to $4.4 million--still far short of our students' needs.

I know these numbers are overwhelming, and I certainly can't reasonably expect a single donor, or even just a few donors, to fill the gap. But with more than 100,000 CLA alumni out there in the world, I know that collectively we can make a dent in the nearly $10 million in remaining annual student need.

As public support for the University continues to fall, private philanthropy will become increasingly critical to our future, to our students' future, and to Minnesota's economy and quality of life. Please help by making a gift, of any size that you can afford, to our CLA Annual Scholarship fund #8186, or call us about the possibility of endowing a named scholarship.

Mary Hicks, Director, Development & Alumni Relations
612-625-5031, hicks002@umn.edu

Richard Sandor, Ph.D. '67, recognized internationally as the father of carbon trading, received Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur of the Year Award in the Midwest region.

Richard Koshalek, M.A. '68, has been appointed director of the Hirschhorn Museum in Washington, D.C.

Larry Johnson, B.A. '70, won first prize in a contest celebrating active seniors, sponsored by Mid-America Events & Expos.

Constance Van Hoven, B.A. '76, is publishing a children's picture book about winter and holiday activities, Twelve Days of Christmas in Minnesota, this October.

Fernando Alvarez, Ph.D. '94, was elected a Fellow of the Econometric Society.

Paul Meierant, B.A. '94, received the University of Minnesota Board of Regents Alumni Service Award.

Fiona Quick, B.A. '96, is a contributing writer for Minnesota Hockey Journal, and author of its "Quick Facts" column.

Scott Muskin, M.F.A. '98, was the inaugural winner of the Parthenon Prize for Fiction for his novel, The Annunciations of Hank Meyerson, Mama's Boy and Scholar.

Robert Ngwu, B.A. '99, President and CEO of Megasouk Group, has been elected President of the Black MBA Association, Twin Cities chapter.

Saidah Arika Ekulona, M.F.A. '96, played the lead role of Mama Nadi in the off-Broadway show Ruined, at the Manhattan Theatre Club.

Polly Carl, Ph.D. '00, is joining Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre as director of artistic development.

Carla Scholtes, B.A. '02, is a program manager for Wells Fargo, designing classroom and online training programs.

The Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis has awarded Kevin Kautzman, B.A. '03, a 2009-10 Jerome Fellowship for his play Then Waves. The play is also a finalist in the Yale Drama Series, Great Plains Theatre Conference, and Id Theater's Seven Devils Playwrights Conference competitions.

The New York Times called Matt Amendt, B.F.A. '04, "charismatic" and "skillful" in the title role of Henry V, a co-production of the Guthrie Theater and New York City-based The Acting Company. The cast included William Sturdivant, B.F.A. '05, and Samuel Taylor, B.F.A. '06, both in multiple roles.

Santino Fontana, B.F.A. '04, plays Tony and Joel Hatch M.F.A. '83, plays George in Billy Elliot. The Broadway show—music by Elton John—won 10 Tony Awards, including Best Musical.

Andrea Uselman-Brandt, B.A. '04, has appeared in plays at the Guthrie and other Twin Cities theaters. She's also published Beyond Talent, a practical guide for individuals interested in starting and sustaining a career in the performance arts.

Laura Krider, B.M. '05, is a choral singer in the Twin Cities and works in administration at the University's School of Music. She was featured on Minnesota Public Radio's Art Hounds program this spring, talking about shape note singing.

Jeff Hnilicka, B.A. '04, is making waves in New York with FEAST (Funding Emerging Artists through Sustainable Tactics). It's a monthly public dinner he co-founded to "democratically fund new and emerging art makers" in the face of declining arts revenues.

Natalie Volin, B.A. '07, philosophy major, has postponed attending U of M Law School to serve as Senator Al Franken's legislative aide for judiciary affairs in his Washington, D.C., office.

Melissa Critchley-Rodriguez, B.A. '08, now a master's student at the University in complementary therapies and healing practices, received the Outstanding Civil Service Award and the Excellence and Community Building Award from the University's Institute on Community Integration.

Minnesota Book Awards

Brian Malloy, M.F.A. '06, won the 2009 Minnesota Book Award for Young People's Fiction with his novel Twelve Long Months. Finalists in other categories included Greg Breining, B.A. '74, A Hard-Water World: Ice Fishing and Why We Do It, general nonfiction; Laura Flynn, M.F.A. '06, Swallow the Ocean, memoir and creative nonfiction; University geography professors John Fraser Hart and Susy Svatek Ziegler, Landscapes of Minnesota: A Geography, Minnesota; Margaret Hasse, M.A. '04, Milk and Tides, poetry; Alison McGhee, M.A. '93, Julia Gillian (and the Art of Knowing), young people's literature; David Lanegran, B.A. '70, Minnesota on the Map: A Historical Atlas, Minnesota; Tim Nolan, B.A. '78, The Sound of It, poetry; and Will Weaver, B.A. '72, Saturday Night Dirt: A Motor Novel, young people's literature.

It's easy to share your news! Go to http://cla.umn.edu/updates/

In Memory

Allan Spear, professor in the Department of History from 1964 to 2000 and the country's first openly gay male state legislator, died in October 2008 at age 71 from complications following surgery.

Spear was president of the Minnesota State Senate, led the Judiciary Committee, and helped to craft and pass the 1993 Human Rights Act Amendment, which he called his "proudest legislative achievement." He co-founded the National Association of Gay & Lesbian Elected and Appointed Officials, and served on the board of the OutFront Minnesota Political Action Committee. In 2008, as part of Minnesota's 150th Anniversary, Spear was honored by the Minnesota History Center as one of the most influential forces in the history of the state—one of the "MN150."

Memorial gifts may be made to the University's Schochet Center Distinguished Lecture Series: www.giving.umn.edu/spear.

Ernest Bormann, professor in the Department of Communication Studies, died of a heart attack last December. Bormann originated the Symbolic Convergence Theory of human communication, in which the stories ("fantasies") that groups create develop shared meaning and social cohesion. Memorial gifts may be made to the Ernest Bormann Symbolic Convergence Theory Fellowship: www.comm.umn.edu/giving.

James Dickey, 69, died in November 2008 after struggling for a year and a half with prostate cancer. A professor of theoretical statistics, he had taught and conducted research at the University since 1986.

Peter Firchow, 70, died October 18, 2008. In 1967 he joined the English Department where he taught British and comparative literature, often in the context of utopian dreams, until his retirement in 2007.

René Jara died November 19, 2008, after a serious illness. A professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese for 28 years, he was an expert in post-colonial studies and Hispanic literatures, and had a passion for poetry.

Leslie C. Johnson, B.A. '64, died in January 2009 at the age of 66. She started the Mississippi Rag in 1973, chronicling the stories of jazz and ragtime musicians to a global audience for 35 years. With her passing, the traditional-jazz and ragtime communities lost their principal voice.

Roger Page, 91, former psychology professor and associate dean of CLA, died December 19, 2008, after a long illness. Memorial gifts may be made to the Roger Page Leadership Scholarship: http://cla.umn.edu/page.

Student Allison Witham and Tony Kushner

One of the great figures of American theater and literature, playwright Tony Kushner, received a University of Minnesota Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree this spring. The degree is the highest honor conferred by the University.

He was nominated by faculty members from the English and American studies departments and the Center for Jewish Studies.

"Kushner's work is a call to struggle for justice, for responsibility, and for love," said Riv-Ellen Prell, former chair of the University's Department of American Studies and an affiliate faculty member in Jewish studies. "In his work devoted to the experiences of gay men and lesbians, Jews, outsiders, men and women of color, and those without power . . . Tony Kushner changed American theater and became one of the great voices of the citizen-artist of our century."

Dean Jim Parente called Kushner "a man who represents the soul of the liberal arts—or, we might say, the liberating arts," because he "holds a mirror to our human experience."

In 1993 Kushner received a Pulitzer Prize for his play, Angels in America. He was in the Twin Cities this spring for the world premiere of his work, The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures, at the Guthrie Theater.

In its history, the University has awarded only 47 other honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degrees. Recipients include Frank Gehry, Dominick Argento, Yanni, Merce Cunningham, Thomas Friedman, Gwendolyn and Jacob Lawrence, James Rosenquist, Charles Schulz, Robert Penn Warren, and August Wilson.

Exhibits

Muslim Spain: Conquest, Expulsion, Legacy, 711-2009
Andersen Gallery
Through Oct. 30

Encounters: The Past Re-Configured
Paintings by Xu Guang and Li Shu
Nash Gallery
Sept. 8-Oct. 8

Celebrating 40 Years of African American Studies and American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota

Andersen Gallery
Oct. 7-Dec. 5;

Here and Now
Faculty, student and alumni photography, curated by James Henkel
Nash Gallery
Oct. 13-Nov. 12

Talking Suitcases: A New Conversation
Suitcases filled with handmade objects that
tell stories, curated by Joyce Lyon and
Susan Armington
Nash Gallery
Nov. 17-Dec. 17

Almost Here: Migrations, Dislocations and Borders in art.
Nash Gallery
Jan. 19-Feb. 18

The Ultimate Homecoming

TCF Bank Stadium Tours & University Open House
Sunday, Oct. 4, 1-4 p.m.

Student Scholar Showcase
TCF Bank Stadium
Wed., October 7, 1-4 p.m.

Concerts

University Symphony Orchestra
Academic Festival Overture, Johannes Brahms; Symphony No. 1 (Titan),
Gustav Mahler
Mark Russell Smith, conductor
Ted Mann Concert Hall
Wed., Oct. 7, 7:30 p.m.

Symphonic Band: Seasons of Change
Works by Dmitri Shostakovich and
Jonathan Newman.
Jerry Luckhardt, conductor
Ted Mann Concert Hall
Wed., Oct. 14, 7:30 p.m.

Jazz Ensemble I
Ted Mann Concert Hall
Thurs., Oct. 15, 7:30 p.m.

Collage Concert
More than 300 students and faculty in a musical extravaganza. Works include Leonard Bernstein's "Make Our Garden Grow"
Ted Mann Concert Hall
Sat., Oct. 17, 7:30 p.m.

University Singers
Symphony of Psalms, Igor Stravinsky
Ted Mann Concert Hall
Frii., Nov. 13, 7:30 p.m.

Wind Ensemble: An American Wind Band Spectacular
Regional premieres of works by Steven Bryant, Carter Pann, and Joseph Turrin; "Symphonic Dances" from West Side Story,
Leonard Bernstein
Craig Kirchhoff, conductor
Ted Mann Concert Hall
Tues., Nov. 24, 7:30 p.m.

Guest and Faculty Recital
Mikka & Mikka "S," and Dikthas, Iannis Xenakis; Traumwerk Book III, Del cuarto elemento, James Dillon
Irvine Arditti, violin and Noriko Kawai, piano
Ted Mann Concert Hall
Sun., Dec. 6; we still need the time for this

University Symphony Orchestra
World premiere performance of Roger Zare's Aerodynamics for Orchestra (Winner of the 2009 Craig and Janet Swan Composer Prize); New Morning for the World, Joseph Schwantner; Symphony No. 3 (Eroica),
Ludwig van Beethoven
Mark Russell Smith, conductor
Ted Mann Concert Hall
Wed., Dec. 9, 7:30 p.m.

Opera

Dance

Theater

For a complete listing of news and events visit us online at:
http://cla.umn.edu/news/events.php

Admission to all events free except as noted

Even in hard times, there's much to be grateful for. Last May, yet another batch of talented CLA graduates crossed perhaps the most important stage of their lives—in Northrop Auditorium.

The world they ventured into requires smarts and grit, not to mention a mother lode of CLA ingenuity and know-how. And one of the more daunting challenges that many will face is a hefty load of debt. We think their CLA education is worth millions. But it's no secret that even those who land the job of their dreams could be hobbled by significant debt well into the next decade.

Fortunately, some will go into the world with a smaller debt load, thanks to the generosity of our donors. In 2008-09, CLA awarded nearly 1,000 scholarships and fellowships totaling more than $4 million. That's an impressive number. But with roughly 16,500 undergraduate and graduate students in the college, the bucket is still barely six percent full.

It certainly won't come as news to you that our students and their families are facing some of the hardest times in decades, and so is our college. And yet, as President Obama noted this spring in his speech on education, a college education is more necessary than ever.

I can certainly understand if you say that now is not the time for us to be asking you for support. After all, the dismal economy has hurt everyone. But there's also never been a better time to give. The need is critical. And the cumulative impact of not giving could be catastrophic for our students, not to mention for our college.

We understand that a President's Club gift ($25,000 or more) is beyond the capacity of many of our donors, and may be a stretch even for those who have given at that level in past years. But we've taken very seriously President Bruininks's call for new ideas and creative solutions in these times. And as we've brainstormed, we've found that sometimes the best new ideas are revivals of old ones.

So we've renewed a successful giving program called the Legacy Scholarship program. Here's how it works: We ask donors to make an annual gift of $3,000, which will be awarded directly to a student who meets the selection criteria—financial need and merit. Why $3,000? That amount is based on research showing that $3,000 is roughly the breaking point for many students; it can make the critical difference between enrolling or not, between staying in school or dropping out. If it's the latter, just think of the loss of human potential—and at what cost to Minnesota!

Today's CLA students are tomorrow's creative problem solvers and trailblazers in every field. If you invest in our students, I promise that you won't be disappointed. If you want to know more, go to cla.umn.edu or contact me at hicks002@umn.edu or 612-625-5541.

To contribute to the Legacy Scholarship: cla.umn.edu/legacy/

Story boats ready to launch.
Photo by Laura Corcoran Mahnke.

"So, in two seconds, away we went, a-sliding down the river, and it did seem so good to be free again and all by ourselves on the big river and nobody to bother us."

&mdashAdventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain

It was probably inevitable that Huck Finn, the 13-year-old hero of the Great American Novel, sought freedom and a new life on the Mississippi. After all, it was and still is the country's mainstem river, connecting it North and South, dividing it East and West, and providing major geographical and historical coordinates—not to mention fruitful metaphors for writers and ordinary folks alike.

Teenagers today are no less eager than Huckleberry Finn was to find meaning in their lives. But today's world, unlike Huck's, can be such that those who live on the Great River may not be very aware of it. In fact, as Anna Metcalfe, artist and environmentalist, found out, some may never have even seen the Mississippi, much less been invited to consider what meaning it may have for their lives.

So it was that in the final year of her master's of fine arts program, Metcalfe designed a way to connect a group of young people to the river, through art.

She worked with nearly 50 teenagers who had summer jobs either with the "Green Team," a group sponsored by the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, the Minnesota Watershed Management Organization and the National Park Service; or with The Conservation Corps and the Garden Corps, hosted by St. Paul's Community Design Center.

During the summer she met with the young people, offering them new ways to understand the river. They learned about watersheds, rain gardens, and pesticides, and studied maps showing how the urban river had changed through history. They made connections between their summer jobs and the health of the river. They considered the river's vital role in their lives, and how it connects them to the millions of people throughout the midsection of the country who also depend on it for survival.

Finally, she invited them to draw and write their own stories about the river; she silk-screened these images onto porcelain clay boats she had molded, which she then fired.

Now there were 50 story boats, each one articulate. One told about its maker's first time on a boat. Another traced a map of the Upper Mississippi, yet another drew the plants growing in the Conservation Corps' organic garden.

Metcalfe designed a way to connect a group of young people to the river, through art. And just as it did for Huck, their encounter with the river left them with a story—a story about where they'd been, a story that had new value and meaning because someone was listening.

And one pictured a refugee family's perilous escape across Thailand's Mekong river on one side, and their crossing of the Mississippi, in a new land, on the other. "That story was rich and powerful," says Metcalfe. "It brought it all together—the young woman's family, its history, what she is doing in conservation now."

Early one morning at Father Hennepin Park, where the river gorge cuts through downtown Minneapolis, Metcalfe and the students met to ceremonially tell the stories and launch the boats into the water. The Saint Paul group held a similar ceremony at Lake Phalen. They were gestures that made explicit the teens' relationship with the river, and signified their role in building a community of citizens concerned about the river.

"The project gave the students a chance to talk about the same issues they were dealing with in their jobs, but within the context of art," Metcalfe says. "They were excited to see their drawings turn into objects."

Like Huck Finn's raft, the boats eventually came out of the water. They were exhibited at Homewood Studios, a North Minneapolis space for local artists and their community, where the teens again told their stories, and visitors added their own stories and drawings to the river tales.

And just as it did for Huck, their encounter with the river left them with a story—a story about where they'd been, a story that had new value and meaning because someone was listening.

Professor David Pellow. Photo by Kelly MacWilliams.

Talking with Department of Sociology chair Chris Uggen, you get the impression that last year's hunt for a new sociology professor was a bit of a feeding frenzy. Competition for candidates was ferocious—not only from other public universities, but also from well-funded private schools, "the Yales of the world," Uggen says. "There's intense market pressure in the social sciences right now."

Fortunately, the department was able to offer a powerful inducement—an endowed chair funded by Edith Martindale, the widow of long-time faculty member Don Martindale.

"The Martindale chair really provides that margin of excellence we need to maintain our position in the discipline," Uggen says. "In this case we were able to recruit a real rising star and make it especially attractive for him to come to Minnesota."

That recruit was David Pellow, a young sociologist from the University of California-San Diego who has written extensively on environmental justice. The hire of that emerging talent, Uggen says, has strengthened the department, adding to its reputation for cutting-edge, real-world research, and enhancing teaching.

"This is someone who is right now advancing the field of environmental justice studies by leaps and bounds," says Uggen.

Honoring a Renaissance Scholar

The story of the endowed chair—the department's first—began in February 2008, with the gift from Edith Martindale, then 92, of $2 million. Mrs. Martindale shies from the limelight but makes her aim clear—to support a faculty position to further the legacy of her husband, a mainstay of the sociology department for 35 years.

Don Martindale arrived at the University in 1948 as an assistant professor, and became a leading spokesman for social behaviorism. He wrote about social theory, social stratification, and the sociology of culture, knowledge, and art. An enthusiastic theorist, Martindale was by all accounts also a captivating speaker and lecturer.

"He was a bit of a renaissance scholar," says Uggen. "It's certainly rare for somebody today to have the range that Don Martindale had."

Perhaps Martindale's greatest legacy was his students. He advised 78 Ph.D. and more than 200 master's graduates during his career—one of the highest totals of any professor in University history. He and Edith often invited students to their Shoreview home overlooking Lake Owasso.

Martindale retired in 1983. He died two years later of a heart attack.

Environmental Justice to Improve the World

"In my view, part of Don's intellectual legacy is in those students. He taught many generations," Uggen says. "I would like to think he would very much like the direction the department has taken in the last decade. Our alumni have been getting excellent jobs in world-class universities. We've nurtured the graduate program, which I know he would have appreciated. Also the intellectual diversity on the faculty has just blossomed and bloomed."

Pellow's field of expertise, environmental justice, concerns the downside of many environmental issues that fall disproportionately on poor people, communities of color, and poverty-stricken nations, who increasingly protest becoming dumping grounds for the wealthy.

Pellow's work, Uggen says, reflects the department's attitude toward research—"the sort of work that makes a real difference in the world."

That's how Pellow sees it, too. "What really keeps me going is being able to connect what's going on in my research to what's going on in the classroom, to what's going on off campus," he says. Sociology is "not only understanding and explaining social institutions in the world around us, but also ultimately improving and changing the world."

His books include Garbage Wars: The Struggle for Environmental Justice in Chicago, a study of how and why the city's landfills and toxic waste dumps were sited most often in low-income communities and communities of color; and his most recent work, Resisting Global Toxics: Transnational Movements for Environmental Justice, which examines how income disparities force hazardous waste and unsustainable industries on poor nations.

Pellow and faculty member Lisa Sun-Hee Park are currently conducting research for a book on immigration and labor conflicts in glitzy Aspen and the rest of Colorado's Roaring Fork Valley. "What surprises a lot of people is how strong the effect of race continues to be," he says. In many cities, "Southeast Asians and Latin Americans are really bearing the brunt of many of these siting decisions."

He plans to soon begin research on how the effects of global climate change are likely to be distributed among communities and nations rich and poor.

Pellow expects these issues to become even more critical, and says the support of an endowment will be of tremendous value to his work. "I'm able to hire research assistants. That in turn professionalizes and trains the research staff and helps them in their careers. It provides me with a lot I wouldn't have had. I'm really grateful."

Watch David Pellow's Martindale lecture at http://reach.cla.umn.edu/pellow

CLA—home to around 40 language programs—hosted nearly 2,000 students from 25 Minnesota high schools during World Languages Day on May 19. It was a fast-paced affair. Students attended three 40-minute classes in or about one of 24 different languages: Arabic, ASL, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, ESL, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hmong, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Norwegian, Ojibwe, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swahili, and Turkish.

Already studying second languages in their high schools, students came from communities as close as Minneapolis and as far away as Pillager to explore language opportunities at the University.

Professor Kieran McNulty and his colleague established that Homo floresiensis was distinct from Homo sapiens. Only three feet tall, Homo floresiensis had a brain about one-third of the size of a human's, but could make stone tools. Photo by Kelly MacWilliams.

Maybe J.R.R. Tolkien was on to something. Fossilized skeletons found in Indonesia in 2003 that resemble his famous "hobbits" turn out to be the remains of a hitherto unknown species in humanity's evolutionary chain that lived at the same time as our very own ancestors.

That is the finding of anthropology assistant professor Kieran McNulty—named this year a McKnight Land-Grant Professor—and his colleague Karen Baab of Stony Brook University in New York, published online in the Journal of Human Evolution. The researchers used cutting-edge 3D modeling methods to compare the cranial features of the 18,000-year-old Homo floresiensis with those of a simulated fossil human of similar size to determine conclusively if the species was distinct from modern humans—and it was.

[Homo floresiensis] is "the most exciting discovery in perhaps the last 50 years," says McNulty. "The specimens have skulls that resemble something that died a million years earlier, and other body parts are reminiscent of our three-million-year-old human ancestors, yet they lived until very recently—contemporaries with modern humans."

One theory is that the species underwent a process of size reduction after branching off from Homo erectus, one of modern-day humanity's ancestors, an even more primitive species.

Learn more about the "hobbit fossils" at: http://reach.cla.umn.edu/hobbit

A J-School freshman, Ellie Lijewski joined professors in a research project: (left to right behind her), Professor Ron Faber, Assistant Professor Marco Yzer, Professor Bruce Cuthbert, and Associate Professor Angus MacDonald. Photo by Rodrigo Zamith.

Ellie Lijewski is researching the effect of anti-drug advertising on teenagers.

She wasn't a professor or a Ph.D. student, but a freshman in the School of Journalism.

Last year Ellie Lijewski and 44 other students received CLA Freshman Research Awards that enabled them to work on research projects with faculty and graduate students. CLA hand-matches students and their mentors to create the best possible partnerships.

Lijewski's team includes professors and grad students from advertising, psychology, and marketing. "We have been measuring the perceived and actual effectiveness of anti-drug ads," she explained. "We are also trying to explain the effects of weak ads versus strong ads and why anti-drug ads sometimes are ineffective or even counter-effective." The study is funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

How valuable is the experience? Says Lijewski, "I'm learning how to work with people who don't even necessarily speak the same academic language, how to solve problems, and how to go about designing and testing unprecedented topics and procedures, all on a deadline. I've discovered that it takes a huge amount of effort to set up studies and recruit volunteers. The most important thing to me, however, is that I am getting this experience so early in my academic career . . . . The relationships and networks I am forging through this experience are priceless. I'm learning more than I thought possible, and it's more rewarding than I ever thought it could be."

Find out more about Ellie Lijewski's research at http://reach.cla.umn.edu/lijewski

If you've seen the movie Gran Torino, you've seen Bee Vang. He's the 17-year-old who co-starred with Clint Eastwood in the hit film about reform and redemption across cultures and generations.

A senior this fall at Armstrong High School in Plymouth, Minnesota, Vang nevertheless attends the University full-time through Minnesota's Post Secondary Enrollment Option (PSEO) program, which allows high school juniors or seniors to earn college credit, tuition-free, while in high school.

Although Gran Torino is set in Michigan, it was inspired by the Hmong community in inner-ring Minneapolis suburbs. Vang, who is Hmong, lives in one of those suburbs—Robbinsdale. He won out over some 2,000 competitors for the role of Thao, whom the Eastwood character, Walt Kowalski, tries to reform, and who ultimately helps Kowalski along the path of his own redemption.

Vang says the acting experience is much harder than he thought it would be . . . and life-changing. It made him more self-aware, his voice and actions stronger and more confident. "Being an actor helped me be sensitive to every detail of my actions. We do so many things unconsciously. For example, you don't realize that if you breathe in when you wave your hand, it shows a different emotion than if you breathe out."

Bee Vang, fourth from left with Clint Eastwood behind him, and other actors on the set of Gran Torino. Photo courtesy of Bee Vang.

It also broadened his thinking about the future. "I was definitely heading into the science field, but [being in the movie] helped me rekindle my love for the arts."

He's already earned 30 college credits through PSEO, and will return to the University this fall as a high-school senior. Last spring he took a PSEO class in fundamentals of performance, and he plans to study film this fall, in addition to anthropology, karate, and journalism.

"PSEO is an amazing program," he says, that lets him "get education beyond high school during high school. It helped me find myself quicker. It is helping me find out what I am passionate about. I'm glad to be here, to live in Minnesota."

And what's the scoop on Clint Eastwood? "He was a sweetheart," says Vang. "He is charming, down-to-earth, humble. It makes me so happy that he chose Hmong to play Hmong instead of just any Asians. We got to portray ourselves."

American Studies faculty honored David Noble with an American Indian "Chief Joseph" blanket. Photo by Kelly MacWilliams.

He co-authored the first multicultural history of the United States. He taught brilliantly, memorably. Supervised 100-plus doctoral dissertations. Influenced the development of American studies at the University and nationwide. Reshaped scholarship in American and cultural history, literature, women's studies, race theory. Wrote nine books, retired, is writing his tenth book.

Did you catch that he retired? Professor David Noble did retire this spring, legendary and lauded, after more than 50 years of scholarship and teaching. But his work continues, as he focuses full bore on a new book, which some of his colleagues are predicting will be his most important. Its working title: "Is the Global Marketplace the Last New World? Economists, Literary Critics and Ecologists Debate the End of History."

Celebrating the retirement were students, colleagues, family, and friends at an event that was variously happy, serious, funny, and poignant, and featured a panel of former students.

Dean Jim Parente spoke to Noble's career as a scholar and educator: "He could chair the American studies department or impersonate Richard Nixon, write books or pack an auditorium. He could attack a problem with full academic rigor, or—as former student Nan Enstad, now at Wisconsin-Madison, says, 'create a warmer space to form a community of scholars.' David, you have made a difference here in more ways than we can count or imagine."

Read more about David Noble: http://reach.cla.umn.edu/noble

Hmong refugees remaining in Thailand sent images of the desecration of loved ones' graves to family and friends in the Twin Cities.

Wat Tham Krabok is a Buddhist monastery located in the rolling plains of central Thailand, about two hours north of Bangkok. In 1992 it became a refuge for some 15,000 Hmong people who had supported the United States during the Vietnam War and would no longer be safe under communist rule in their native Laos. Many who lived at the monastery eventually relocated in the Twin Cities—home to the largest urban Hmong population in the nation.

Three years ago, word began to spread that more than 900 Hmong graves located on monastery grounds had been desecrated. Refugees remaining in Thailand sent videotape to Twin Cities friends and family showing in graphic detail the remains of loved ones being dismembered, boiled, thrown into open graves, and burned. Two bodies were reported displayed in a mini shrine at a shopping mall—for good luck. The reason given by the Thai government for the disinterment had to do with water quality.

The desecrations were more than horrifying. In the Hmong religion, the spirit of a deceased person who is not properly buried will wander for eternity, never reaching its ancestors, never reincarnating in the world of the living, interrupting the cycle of life.

Members of the community approached the University for help, and CLA's Human Rights Program, which is part of the Institute for Global Studies, responded. Program director Professor Barbara Frey organized a town hall meeting at which the 20 students in her human rights internship class and two Hmong graduate students collected statements from 159 aggrieved families. Taking the position that families have a human right to honor their dead, they forwarded the statements with a formal complaint to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

In December, James Anaya, U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Indigenous Issues, held a public hearing at Coffman Union on the Minneapolis campus. Several hundred people attended; the testimony was moving. Anaya described the accounts as "assault to culture, assault to a people." In addition to reporting his findings and his recommendations to the U.N. Human Rights Council, he committed working to resolve cultural differences that led to this violation and ensure that it will not happen again.

Frey says that the Human Rights Program, on behalf of the Hmong families, is seeking a three-part resolution from the Thai government: a declaration that the rights of an indigenous community have been violated, the opportunity to reclaim the bodies, and reparations for expenses related to either reclaiming the body or paying for ceremonies to put family spirits at peace.

Grave desecration is not a problem unique to Hmong people. It has also been experienced by the Bahá'í in Iran, Jews worldwide, and Native Americans in the U.S.

Watch a video and read more:
http://reach.cla.umn.edu/hmonggraves

On December 10, 2007, the Nobel Prize committee assembled in Stockholm to present the 2007 award for economics to three American scholars. Two of them took the stage to accept their gold medallions. The third, University of Minnesota professor emeritus Leo Hurwicz, remained in Minneapolis.

It wasn't a protest, by any means, simply a recognition that international travel, especially for a worldly 90-year-old, is sometimes more burden than adventure. (And really - Sweden in December?) Staying home was also symbolic of the work for which Hurwicz was being recognized: Rules aren't immutable; changing them can result in better outcomes. The trick, mastered by Hurwicz, is in knowing how to change them.

So, also on December 10, Jonas Hafstrom, the Swedish ambassador to the United States, arrived at the Ted Mann Concert Hall at the University of Minnesota and presented the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences to Leonid Hurwicz—who was surrounded by more friends and family than could ever have flown to Sweden.

A better outcome, by design.

Abstract but Applied

"Mechanism design" is the formal name of Hurwicz's theory. It is a field he invented a half-century ago and developed over subsequent decades. Today, mechanism design is as fundamental to modern economic thought as quantum theory is to physics, and in its mathematical density perhaps as difficult to understand.

But while the theory is complex and abstract, it is also intensely pragmatic, and finds light now in a wide range of applications—from the creation of better voting procedures, to improved provision of credit to farmers in Thailand, to carbon emissions markets that may help curb global warming. Thanks to mechanism design, medical schools design procedures to find residency matches, donated kidneys find their way to the best recipients, and electricity producers better supply their markets.

It's all due to theorems devised years ago in a small office in Heller Hall on the University's West Bank solely because Leo Hurwicz asked the question: "Why should we take existing institutions for granted?"

"The success of emissions trading is further proof that the private sector brings forth enormous creativity in solving social problems if we introduce a profit motive and a price signal." —Richard Sandor, U of M alumnus, founder of Chicago Climate Exchange

Easy as pie

"Mechanism design" is the idea that social, political and economic institutions (mechanisms) can be shaped (designed) to yield superior results.

"Whether one considers auctions, elections or the taxes we pay, our lives are governed by mechanisms which make collective decisions while attempting to take account of individual preferences,"wrote the Nobel Prize committee in explaining the economics behind the award. "Mechanism design can be described as the art of producing institutions that align individual incentives with overall social goals."

Consider this familiar example: Two people agree they want to divide a pie equitably. How can they achieve that "social" goal? By the rules of the optimal mechanism, known to us all since childhood:

• One person divides the pie into two slices.
• The other chooses the first slice.

Because the second person, out of self-interest, will likely choose the larger of the two slices, the first person has an incentive to cut the pie perfectly in half. The rules don't rely on either person being honest or altruistic. Rather, they harness the self-interest of each individual in such a way that the best possible outcome is achieved.

Rules for dividing a pie might seem child's play, but changing the variables quickly increases complexity. Increase the number of people or pies, make one person the pie's owner, introduce money or differing preferences or types of pie, and the rules—and the math—become much more difficult.

But what about the "invisible hand," Adam Smith's famous metaphor? A student of introductory economics learns that perfectly competitive markets harness the self-interest of individuals to achieve the best possible allocation of scarce resources. Doesn't that cut through the confusion?

Not quite, the Nobel committee observed. Although these ideal competitive markets do a remarkable job of satisfying people's preferences with maximum efficiency, "in practice," the committee said, "conditions are usually not ideal. Competition is not completely free, consumers are not perfectly informed ... [and people] may use their private information to further their own interests."

This is where Hurwicz offered Smith a helping hand, designing mechanisms for situations that are less than ideal.

"People are not angels"

When Hurwicz began research on mechanism design, he ignored the issue of whether people would obediently follow the rules he designed. "Whenever I was asked to present some of my work," he told an interviewer, "I would start by saying 'Of course, the incentive problem is very important, but I will assume that people are angels ....' At some point I decided that since I know people are not angels, perhaps I should not completely ignore the incentive aspect." And that, really, was his breakthrough. Rather than rely on co­ercion or unrealistic assumptions about human behavior, he would insist that mechanisms be "incentive-compatible," he said, "a system of rules designed in such a way that people would have an incentive to obey these rules."

"What Leo brought to the table was the insistence that any mechanism must be incentive-compatible," says V.V. Chari, professor of economics at the U of M. "That is, we cannot rely on individuals to act in some social interest. Instead we must expect them to act in their private interests. And given that, any mechanism must provide people with the incentives to take the right action at the right time. Leo developed that language and brought it to the forefront of economics."

Global warming

Perhaps the most global of all applications of Hurwicz's theory is climate change, the object of a mechanism designed by University economics alumnus Richard Sandor (Ph.D., 1967).

In a 1995 alumni profile, Sandor highlighted courses with Leo Hurwicz as among the most valuable he took as he worked toward his doctorate in economics, saying they provided "a rock-solid foundation" for his future work. That future included a professorship at University of California, Berkeley, and years as chief economist at the Chicago Board of Trade.

But today, Sandor is best known for creating markets for trading carbon emissions credits, a direct application of mechanism design. The social goal: Curb global warming by limiting the quantity of carbon released to the atmosphere. The mechanism: the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), a privately run exchange founded by Sandor in 2003.

CCX is like a Craigslist for carbon dioxide. Its paying members—corporations and government bodies—commit to voluntary emissions targets, and if they manage to beat their target—producing cars or cement or electricity without emitting as much carbon as expected—they can sell those carbon credits to members that have exceeded their target.

The United States has yet to enact mandatory carbon caps, but European governments have already done so, and firms like Ford Motor Co. have joined CCX because they see it as in their self-interest to anticipate federal or state carbon regulations. As Sandor testified to the U.S. Senate several years ago, "The success of emissions trading is further proof that the private sector brings forth enormous creativity in solving social problems if we introduce a profit motive and a price signal."

Private information

The Hurwicz theory also finds clear application in the government auctions that have flourished in recent years to sell public resources as tangible as timber and amorphous as radio frequencies.

When Hurwicz decided to deal with the fact that people aren't angels, he meant, in part, that we don't always speak the truth: We might not work as hard as we tell our bosses we will, we might tell a used car dealer that we can't spend more than $5,000 when our actual budget is twice that. This "private information"problem has been especially problematic when governments sell public resources because private buyers may understate the value they place on timber, for example, to get it at a bargain price.

Mechanism design theory has allowed economists to design better systems for selling public resources through auctions. "In the last 12 years or so, there has been a big push to move beyond theoretical mechanism design and bring it to bear in real markets," notes Peter Cramton, an economist at the University of Maryland. "The shift is to what I would term 'market design,' where economists play a big role in the design of actual market mechanisms. Applications include timber auctions, spectrum auctions. The electricity market is another big area."

"An auction is a particular mechanism and mechanism design has us thinking about what the incentives are for participation and bidding strategy and so on," Cramton says. "A big aspect of it is addressing the informational issues and trying to establish rules so there is better information conveyed in the bidders' bids."

Voting mechanisms

It might be crass to suggest that elections are the ultimate government auction, but mechanism design is also finding direct application in improving voting procedures.

"Often we have problems like finding a voting system that will have certain properties, and the techniques we use to figure out the answer to those problems are mechanism design," observes David Epstein, professor of political science at Columbia University. "The same theory used in economics to figure out a good auction mechanism is used in politics because voting is a type of mechanism. As we say, it's a way of allocating or producing results and you get different results depending on how people value the object in question. Here it's an election, not a spectrum to be auctioned off, but the idea is the same."

Epstein has studied how legislatures and courts can design political maps so that voters can achieve specified goals. "Do you want a political map to promote 'substantive representation' or 'descriptive representation'? That is, do you want to focus on the type of people that get elected or the type of outcomes that a legislature produces?"

Political scientists like Epstein help policymakers figure out what kinds of redistricting will further legislative goals. "In fact, the Supreme Court has a lot to do with that in the voting rights area," he notes. "They're going to lay down basic principles of redistricting and given those principles, the different states will implement them."

Of course, mechanism design isn't confined to U.S. voting systems. Roger Myerson, one of Hurwicz's Nobel co-recipients, has done recent work on how to structure voting that will promote democracy in Iraq. "Democracy doesn't come by edict," he told The New York Times last year, "but by institutions and mechanisms that ensure politicians must compete for the trust of the voters."

Epstein himself has applied mechanism design in international contexts, consulting with the World Bank. "These projects are on democratization and corruption, one of the oldest mechanism-design problems there is," he observes. "How do you design a government that is strong enough to make laws and enforce them, yet isn't so strong that it overruns individual freedom? You see applications of mechanism design all over in political economy."

From kidneys to credit

Indeed, once you start looking, mechanism design seems ubiquitous. The process of matching medical school students to hospital residencies used to be one of ultimate pressure and potential disasters. It's still stressful, but techniques derived from mechanism-design theory have rationalized the process considerably, achieving optimal matches between new doctors and the hospitals that need them. The same is true for kidney donations, where finding the right recipients for a particular organ donation has long been open to delay and mismatch. Here, too, mechanism design has smoothed the process by establishing rules of the game that are incentive-compatible and oriented toward optimal solutions.

The arcane formulas and abstract theory that constitute mechanism design even find relevance in the daily life of farmers in rural India and Thailand, where University of Chicago economist Robert Townsend conducts his research. For nearly two decades, Townsend (U of M Ph.D. 1975), has studied the work patterns, production methods and credit markets of Indian and Thai farmers and found that mechanism design theory is an incredibly fruitful way of understanding those economies.

In the Indian villages that Townsend studied, for example, small groups of farmers would cooperatively rent farm acreage from a landowner. Through careful data gathering and analysis, Townsend better understood how these farming arrangements actually worked. Would some farmers work less than others, pretending to be sick? If so, how would other farmers share the harvest? How was weather- risk shared between farmers and the landowner?

"We wanted to know if they shared risk within the village reasonably well or if dealing with incentives caused them to deviate from an optimal allocation," says Townsend.

He's studied similar situations in Thailand, as part of a 10-year research project to understand how microcredit—small loans given to farmers with varying arrangements for repayment—can be better structured.

"By writing down these explicit models in the tradition of mechanism design," notes Townsend, "you can back out implications for observables." That is, you can see how incentives and rules of the game resulted in observed outcomes. Then you can grasp what­ever problems are amenable to solution. "If it's an information problem, then potentially the [lender] might want to do a bit more monitoring to get more information about the borrower's actions. Or if it's a commitment problem [where borrowers don't repay loans], then the [lender] ought to think about more stringent penalties imposed on borrowers."

In both India and Thailand, Townsend's exhaustive research has applied the theory of mechanism design at the most basic level. "We've been gathering an enormous amount of data and found that these principles apply throughout," he says. "It's all been geared toward first, understanding how things actually work, and second, thinking about possible remedies."

Catching up

Had the contributions of Leo Hurwicz been recognized earlier, before he turned 90, he might have traveled to Stockholm for the award ceremony. But no one would suggest that the Minneapolis celebration was a lesser affair. By staying at home, he shared his honor with the people who surrounded him during the years spent creating and refining this seminal theory.

One of them, his son Maxim, shared these words at the gathering: "When Leo first started talking about mechanism design ... there was no immediate, concrete application for his theories. But these days we don't have to look far to see what Leo was imagining and trying to explain a half century ago ...."

It has just taken a few decades for the world to catch up.

Schwitzer and his colleagues found that news stories about treatments, tests, products, and procedures often omit information about costs, benefits and harms, other treatment options, and potential conflicts of interest. The results, says Schwitzer, can be unnecessary fear-mongering and consumer demand for unproven therapies.

One common fault is citing only relative risk (the risk comparison between two different groups) as opposed to absolute risk (actual probability). For example, ABC's "Good Morning America" reported that breast cancer patients with relatively low blood levels of vitamin D were 94 percent more likely to have their cancer spread and 73 percent more likely to die than those with high levels of vitamin D. But nothing was said about an individual's overall chances that a cancer would spread or cause death.

As for cost, Schwitzer says, "It's unforgivable that more than 75 percent of health journalism articles ... failed to address cost."

Although he says that we're also getting some of the best health journalism ever, "the valleys between the peaks may undo a lot of the good by driving consumers to demand unproven therapies."

Schwitzer's work was published in the online journal PLoS Medicine in May. He publishes a Web site reviewing medical information at HealthNewsReview.org.

PHOTO: Kelly MacWILLIAMS

A new major: Religious Studies

AFRO 3910: Digital Storytelling in and with Communities of Color
We tell stories to preserve memory, build identity, construct meaning, and make connections with others and the world. In this brand-new course, professor Walt Jacobs and graduate instructor Rachel Raimist look at how communities of color use storytelling to write history, learn, entertain, organize, and heal. Through writing, video, photography, sound, and artwork, students are developing digital stories about Twin Cities communities of color.

ENGL 3741: Literacy and American Cultural Diversity
This is one of several service-learning courses that gives students direct experience working at a community organization. Neither internship nor volunteering, service learning is a kind of independent immersion in the workforce, with the opportunity to share insights and experiences with classmates. In this class, students serve as literacy workers for two hours a week outside of class and coursework.

Cool freshman seminars

HUM 1905: Utopias and Anti-Utopias: Can the real world become the ideal world?
Students explore the ideal society and humanity's potential for good and evil as envisioned by philosophers, writers, and cultural critics, from ancient to modern. The course is taught by assistant professor of humanities George Kliger.

LING 1901: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow: Language, endanger­ment, death, and revitalization
We're told that more than 90 percent of the thousands of languages that have existed through history will become extinct within this century. What does that mean? What's lost when a language is no longer spoken? Freshmen explore these themes with linguistics professor Nancy Stenson.

Pol 1903: Exploring Constitutional Meaning: From founders to MySpace
Constitutional principles have influenced some of the most controversial issues in American politics, including slavery, equal citizenship, racial discrimination, free speech, and religious expression in schools. Students are examining landmark Supreme Court cases as well as reformers who have challenged the Constitution, such as leaders of anti-slavery societies and women's suffrage groups.

More freshman seminars

Honors seminars for freshmen and sophomores

HSem 2051H: The Rules of the Game: Exploring U.S. campaigns and elections
Students monitored the U.S. presidential and some congressional campaigns to assess how political theory and practice converged in 2008. They discussed how political scientists study and understand electoral politics, and also were encouraged to volunteer for a campaign of their choice. Assistant professor Kathryn Pearson is the instructor.

HSem 2053H: Psychology of the Paranormal
Most Americans hold one or more supernatural, paranormal, or pseudo­scientific beliefs like mind reading, fortune telling, psychokinesis, out-of-body experiences, and alien abduction. In this course, students evaluate the evidence for a variety of these claims, using critical and analytical methods. The course is taught by psychology professor Charles R. (Randy) Fletcher.

PHOTO: Kelly O'BRIEN

In October James A. Parente, Jr., was named dean of the College of Liberal Arts by Provost Thomas Sullivan, having served for more than a year as interim dean of the University's largest college. He received Board of Regents approval in November.

“Parente will be an outstanding and visionary leader and strategic thinker who will promote excellence across the entire college," Sullivan said in making the announcement. “Those who know his exceptional academic work know that it spans multiple time periods, disciplines and languages, and know also the enormous respect he has for the social sciences, humanities and arts."

A member of the University's faculty since 1993, Parente received strong support from faculty, students, staff, and alumni.

“With Jim, CLA has a Dean who is extremely thoughtful and has great ideas for where the college can go," said Susan Craddock, Chair of the CLA Council of Chairs. “His obvious integrity and openness lend themselves to good working relations across multiple sectors of CLA and beyond, something that only improves the strength of CLA as a whole."

Bethany Khan, CLA Student Board member and former board president, said, “He is quite the well-rounded gentleman. He's really comfortable in his role as someone that we go to for advice, for help. When we bring him concerns and complaints, he's very knowledgeable."

Parente is former chair of the Department of German, Scandinavian and Dutch and former associate dean for faculty and research. He served on the faculty at Princeton University and the University of Illinois at Chicago. He earned his Ph.D. and M.A. in German languages and literatures from Yale University.

His awards include the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for Independent Study and Research and a visiting appointment to the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University. He is a discipline representative to the Renaissance Society of America and external evaluator for the National Endowment for the Humanities, a dozen scholarly journals and department and academic programs at UCLA, Harvard, Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania.

"As dean of this academically diverse and important college," Provost Sullivan said, “he will be committed to the values of deep, broad thinking and teaching, and he will ensure that CLA flourishes as an intellectual community."

PHOTO: Everett AYOUBZADEH

In his new book, The Political Psychology of Democratic Citizenship, psychology professor Eugene Borgida and his co-editors, political science colleagues John Sullivan and Christopher Federico, review research about how we vote and why we can be so passionate about our political positions.

"Our understanding of political behavior has been dominated by a rational-choice model where people are engaged in deliberative thought and calculation," says Borgida. "But when we are asked why we evaluate a candidate the way we do, it's not as if we zoom into the prefrontal cortex, grab the real reason, and cite that reason. What we are more likely to do is tap into a pool of culturally accepted explanations and spout them, even though our preferences are being driven by other factors."

Those factors--emotions, values, and cultural understandings--all tag along with reason to the voting booth, says Borgida. They may even overshadow it. For one thing, our inclinations toward partisanship reside in the parts of the brain linked to emotions.

"Insofar as those structures control our feelings and fears, they may shed some light on the passion we have for partisan politics because they're coming from the same source as our emotions," Borgida says.

Then there are the powerful forces underlying our biases. In spite of what we say, studies show that our decisions are affected by almost unconscious responses to a candidate's skin color or gender.

"We may not think we harbor general antipathies toward women or African Americans," Borgida says. "Yet, when they are running for the most powerful political office in the land, this hidden bias affects our perceptions of them, and our willingness to support them."

It may be possible to correct such hidden bias, Borgida says, but "it's not easy. Some of these ways of thinking are deeply ingrained."

Then there's ideology. For most of us, absorbing political information is like dining in a restaurant. We don't begin from scratch to form our positions on issues and candidates. Instead, we choose from menus that "chefs"--candidates, journalists, professional activists, and academics--have defined as the ideas that go into political choices and determined what it means to be liberal, conservative, or middle-of-the-road.

Clear-cut ideology makes it easier to sort through the cacophony of political voices. In those cases, people don't have to sort issue-by-issue because their ideology gives them a network of interrelated positions on a wide range of choices.

"It means that I have answers at my disposal to many different questions," says Federico, who also directs the University's Center for the Study of Political Psychology. "It's not just one question like 'Should we raise taxes?' or 'Should abortion be legal?'"

Of course, there are true independents, well-informed voters who do prefer to evaluate candidates issue by issue. In any case, though, Federico finds that people with a strong need to evaluate make more effective use of their knowledge.

"Having knowledge isn't enough to make people politically or ideologically engaged," he says. "They also have to approach the world with what you might call an evaluative eye. They have to care enough about the world to know what they like and what they dislike."

Many other psychological factors accompany voters to the polls.

One of the most powerful is the most simple: order of names on a ballot. The polling place can make a difference too; chances for a school-funding referendum improve if a school is the polling place. A candidate's face can frighten or reassure a voter because our minds make blink-like judgments in reaction to facial features.

We still should believe in the value of gearing up our brains for rational and deliberative evaluation of the candidates and issues. Nevertheless, it seems that a parallel--arguably, more powerful--process also takes place deep inside us at the same time. Adapted from an article by Sharon Schmickle

Photograph by Kelly MacWilliams

As the world becomes increasingly technologically advanced and globally interdependent, we need the liberal arts more than ever before. They are the foundation of all academic learning.

We need the disciplinary knowledge of the liberal arts, their interdisciplinary connections and discoveries, and their insights. A world without the liberal arts risks being a world without values, without beauty, imagination, or pleasure--a world bereft of history, language, the arts, and any understanding of the complex social, economic, and political networks in which we live our lives, both professionally and personally. The liberal arts inspire; they enunciate the social, intellectual and aesthetic ideals we expect technology to serve. They are the intellectual treasures we human beings cherish and share around the globe.

This College of Liberal Arts is the achievement of more than a century of distinguished scholarship and creativity; I am proud and honored to be its new dean. In large measure, the reputation of the University rests on CLA - its largest college - and on the distinctive way in which we reach our highest ambitions.

My goal is to foster a unity that enables the college to remain creatively agile and astonishingly productive, and to shape an exemplary academic collective. I envision the college as

... a place where students benefit from an extraordinary college experience, learn from each other, receive professional and disciplinary training for their postgraduate careers, and assume responsibility for continued intellectual growth;

... a place where researchers and artists have the resources to achieve their most creative ideas, and learn and collaborate with each other within and across disciplines, in both a local and a global context;

... a place where faculty, students, and staff are so diverse that everyone embraces diversity as the foundation for academic excellence without question or hesitation;

... a place where the external community and alumni regard the college as a vibrant partner for continued collaboration in research and teaching.

All institutions of higher learning are facing external fiscal challenges as the first decade of the 21st century ends. Challenging times provide opportunities to reexamine and refocus our educational and research mission. I am confident that, regardless of external challenges, we have the talent, creativity, and commitment to accomplish our aspirations. Of course, we will need our friends in Minnesota and around the world to support our efforts, as they have so faithfully for over a century.

Together we can fulfill the promise of the liberal arts: to prepare the next generation to see clearly in a changing and uncertain world, to be original and independent thinkers, and to bring intellectual leadership to bear in a humane democracy.

Thank you for your continued support, and best wishes for a happy New Year!

James A. Parente, Jr.
Dean
Professor of German, Scandinavian and Dutch

PHOTO: Kelly MacWILLIAMS

By Linda Shapiro
Photo by Richard Anderson
Filmmaker and faculty member Hisham Bizri turns everyday life into visual poetry with an emotional pulse

Hisham Bizri believes films are living organisms that can give people hope and comfort.

When Hisham Bizri talks about filmmaking, he becomes a poet, a scientist, and a Utopian philosopher by turns. Bizri's work has been shaped by his experiences growing up in a country in turmoil and by his belief that films are living organisms with the potential to "create possible worlds" that give people hope and comfort.

A native of Sidon, Lebanon, Bizri grew up watching European art cinema and classic American westerns while civil war raged around him. He has lived in the United States for over 20 years, making films that reflect his personal experience of mediating between his Arab/Muslim upbringing and his Anglo/American culture. "I make references in my films to things that have been informed by my Lebanese origins and Lebanese history, but also by my exposure to the West. The works of Bach, Joyce, and Proust—all these shaped my mind," says Bizri, an assistant professor of film.

"People in my country and everywhere are unaware of the tragic and the magic in everyday life. I'm fascinated by the human spirit that can create such wonderful things in art and at the same time destroy so much. How can the sublime and the ridiculous coexist?"

Visual poetry

While his films have been shown in Beirut and internationally, Bizri wonders how well he's been able to communicate to his countrymen. "It's difficult for them to get into my mind, and it's a dilemma for me. I'm not sure what difference I'm making," says Bizri, who has seen Lebanon radically altered over the past couple of decades. "I have a very difficult presence there now. Lebanese culture is in decay. Education and media have become commercialized. We've lost our sense of poetry."

In 2007, Bizri won a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship, awarded for "exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." This year he was awarded the distinguished 2008-09 Rome Prize by the American Academy in Rome. Together these fellowships will enable this internationally acclaimed filmmaker to work on two films that have been brewing for some time. Song for the Deaf Ear will be a meditation on war and violence in Lebanon created from material Bizri has shot over the past few years, and from film archives. Cairo Psalm, loosely inspired by James Joyce's novel Ulysses, will explore the theme of spiritual exile by following the lives of characters who have been dispossessed of their native country, culture, and religion.

"I'm fascinated by the human spirit that can create such wonderful things in art and at the same time destroy so much. How can the sublime and the ridiculous coexist?"

"There's always a tension between abstraction and representation in my films," says Bizri. "I want this film to reflect the sense of anxiety, melancholy, and despair that people are currently feeling in Egypt."

The process of creating his films—which he describes as "visual poems"—involves a complex balance of technical skill and visceral intuition. "There is so much that the eye can see but doesn't; I try in my films to make that visible," says Bizri. "But because the camera can record anything, you must be vigilant about creating something while you're recording. Otherwise it becomes boring, like most contemporary cinema—the same old stories."

While the skill of looking through a camera with clarity of intent must be carefully honed, the filmmaker's passion also needs plenty of room to maneuver, he suggests: "Film becomes universal when you make the viewers feel the emotional impulse of the scene they are watching. Creating the right rhythm is the most important thing in art. It's the rhythm that carries the emotional potential and shows you the soul of the filmmaker."

Bizri brings to his classes not only his brilliance as an artist but also a dedication to students that makes him "one of the University's great treasures," says department chair John Archer.

"Lots of students are anxious, depressed. They are desperate to communicate and don't know how to do it," says Bizri. "Film is a way to know the world of emotions, soul, spirit, and the unconscious. If you come at filmmaking from the angle of passion, you can make students see that in beauty they can discover a kind of peace they won't find in the increasing commercialization of cultures around the world."

Republished from Intersections, a publication of the Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature.

Space will likely always be an extension of our beliefs and values, a record of pasts that we yearn for—or regret. But in an age of globalization, some have suggested that physical space is losing its influence over our economies and our national identities.

We live, or so we're told, in a global village, where physical location, distance, and borders have been rendered irrelevant by supersonic jets and fiber optic cables.

But even before September 11th recharged our awareness of fault lines, anthropologist Kale Fajardo wasn't convinced that globalization always turned the borders between countries into leaking membranes.

The reason? Not all things global are fast, digital, or homogenizing, Fajardo says. More than 90 percent of the world's trade happens via ships that take two to three weeks to cross oceans. Forgotten by pundits, global shipping has important and often overlooked effects on the identities of those who work on ships and in ports.

Fajardo should know. This assistant professor in the Department of American Studies has spent ten years researching Filipino involvement in global shipping. Last summer, Fajardo spent two weeks doing followup research aboard a container ship traveling from the port of Oakland to the port of Hong Kong, via the Northern Pacific Rim, with stops in Tokyo, Osaka, and Kiaoshung.

Those ships and the sea they traverse are “in between" spaces, Fajardo says, where crew members are quite isolated for weeks at a time from the worlds they help to connect. And they are staffed by crews who hail from around the globe: Fajardo's ship last summer included crew members from Kiribati, Germany, and the Philippines.

Contrary to the conventional wisdom that globalization blurs identities, Fajardo found the opposite effect on board the cargo ship: the contained space strengthened, rather than diluted, the national identities of the ship's crew members.

Take, for instance, the ship's Filipino members. Within Asia and globally, Filipinos have been feminized as a people, notes Fajardo. Working in over 200 countries, they have been subjected to a global reputation that is often racist and mysogynistic: “Many Filipinos, particularly, women, work as overseas contract workers," Fajardo says. “Because of power imbalances, images and narratives of the Filipino subject have emerged, saying that she's a victimized woman, particularly because she might work as a maid, nanny, or prostitute, or because she immigrated as a ‘mail order bride.'"

Seafaring has become a way for Filipino men to resist global stereotypes. “Seafaring provides a kind of alibi or opportunity for saying, ‘We're not the victim. We can be seen in this more manly, heroic way,'" Fajardo explains.

The same spaces and technology that facilitate connections can also reinforce just how culturally different and distinctive we remain. And that's a side of globalization that we don't see when we're reading about the latest McDonalds to open in Moscow.

For physical geographers like Susy Ziegler, there's no such thing as being unable to see the forest for the trees. Indeed, it's only by immersing yourself in those details, Ziegler says—in lake sediments, pollen, charcoal, macrofossils, tree rings—that you can really understand what an environment was, is, and can be.

If you know how to read them, she says, those details will tell you stories about a landscape's past: tales of blazing fires and the regeneration that followed, of decades of gradual climate change and its lasting effects.

These are stories we need to hear, says Ziegler, an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota. "Understanding vegetation response to past climate and disturbance regimes helps predict the impact of environmental change on future vegetation patterns. If we can understand the past, we can manage land, forest, and water resources better; we can understand the influence people have had on vegetation and better think about what kind of environment we want—and what we want our protected land to look like."

Take, for instance, the region in southeastern Minnesota where the Zumbro River and Weaver Dunes abut the Upper Mississippi River Valley—a complex landscape made up of wetlands, tributaries to the Mississippi River, terraces, and upland sand dunes. Rare, threatened, and endangered species make their homes there. And sundry groups of people have vested interests in the region and its future for agriculture, recreation, conservation, water management, transportation, and utilities.

With the help of a grant from the U's Center for Urban and Regional Affairs Faculty Interactive Research Program, Ziegler is examining the physical characteristics and dynamics of this Minnesota landscape. She's finding out about its past and learning how humans have already affected the area. Based on her findings, Ziegler and her research assistant, Mary Williams, will propose changes in land-use planning and policy that best support the landscape's role as wildlife corridor, hunting and fishing ground, food source, and wastewater treatment area.

In conducting her research, Ziegler is carrying on the department's tradition of studying the connection between vegetation and its larger environment—factors such as climate, landforms, soils, nutrient cycles, and historical events.

Other physical geographers in the department are engaged in similar work. Kurt Kipfmueller conducts research on climate change in Itasca State Park and the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and its effect on patterns of vegetation there. Bryan Shuman studies the effects of fire and climate change on the vegetation history of the Big Woods of southern Minnesota. Kathy Klink examines variations in wind speeds over space and through time in Minnesota.

Together, these scholars are constructing the knowledge that Minnesota residents need to make sound decisions about how to preserve and maximize the quality of open space and undeveloped land in the state.

Sharing their findings with Minnesota students in the classroom, Ziegler says, is an important part of that process. In a course called Biogeography of the Global Garden, Ziegler teaches students to understand in historical perspective the relationship of plants and animals with their larger habitat, including climate, soils, landforms, glaciers, and long-term environmental change.

"It's a challenging and fun class to teach," Ziegler says. "We take an evolutionary perspective, looking at change over a range of time scales from millions of years to seasonal cycles. We discuss current events such as the spread of bird flu and the SARS epidemic from a geographic perspective. And we cover a range of topics to help students become better informed global citizens who think about how their choices affect the environment."

Ultimately, Ziegler hopes, the course will prepare a generation to think intelligently and responsibly about how to use untapped land. That's an ambitious goal, but the class is a good beginning—more than 500 students, global citizens all, enroll annually in the course.

"We hope the class will inspire students to be excited about geography, explore the world around them, and embark on projects that will help them understand science and make the world better," Ziegler says. "That's what geography education is all about."

Republished from Minnesota Geographer, spring 2007, a publication by the College of Liberal Arts.

By Mary Shafer

When Beverly and Richard Fink visited the University campus this September, they looked on as students carrying huge, unwieldy boxes checked into dorms with the help of nervous, fretful parents. They toured the renovated Coffman Union, and marveled at the new pedestrian bridges that span Washington Avenue. In short, they took in the sights that make alumni a little nostalgic for their college days.

Richard and Beverly Fink
Photo by Leo Kim

To top off their campus visit, the Finks met with Paul Sackett, the renowned professor of industrial/organizational psychology who had just been appointed to a new College of Liberal Arts endowed chair—the Beverly and Richard Fink Professorship in Liberal Arts.

The Finks' decision to create the endowment seemed a natural convergence of their passions: They champion education, they're passionate about the arts, and they lead the charge when it comes to community involvement. The unexpected delight, they say, is that the first professor to hold this chair is not only a distinguished scholar but also someone whose research interests dovetail with the values Richard (Dick) Fink brought to his own professional career.

“[Sackett] studies the issues that were critical to my company—cultural blending, measures of success, testing to determine people's effectiveness. I was very pleased he was chosen. Dick says.

And if anyone knows business, it's Richard Fink. A 1952 U graduate and Rhodes scholar, he went on to graduate work at Harvard and then began his professional career in academia as a political science lecturer at the University of Wisconsin. Soon, though, he joined the textile business his grandfather had begun. It wasn't what you'd call a glamorous beginning; he worked up a sweat pressing shirts in the laundry room and later progressed to delivery driver. In 1969, when G&K Services went public, he assumed the leadership—and over the next 40 years, the company grew to become a national leader in its industry.

Beverly is the educator and artist in the family, a self-described “18-year college dropout? who earned an associate degree from the U in 1952 before she left to raise four children. When she dropped back in, Beverly not only finished her bachelor's degree but also earned a master's in education for gifted children.

The demands of student life meant that her children had to endure the transition from “home-baked cookies to Oreos," Beverly says. But her “older student" status had its advantages. “I wasn't afraid to ask the cutest boy in biology class for help," she chuckles. Later, she taught for 12 years in Wayzata Public Schools.

Although their careers have been in education and business respectively, it is the arts that have been the Finks' steady passion. In their home—where paintings and pots by granddaughters and nieces are displayed beside works of well-known artists—their interests have coalesced into a shared dedication to philanthropy.

The two talk with fervor about liberal arts as the necessary foundation for a solid education, and about the University's centrality to Minnesota's culture and economy. “There's a dynamic at the University that you don't find anywhere else in Minnesota," Beverly says. “Students are exposed to so many different kinds of people and instruction."

“There isn't a single institution that has as great an impact on the state as does the University," Dick adds. “It has such a big role to play in the region, and needs to be kept strong.

“The University should have enough resources that it is not completely subject to the vagaries of the budget process, especially if we want the U to be really prominent, to have a really stellar faculty."

Clearly, the Finks do want that for the U—and sharing their good fortune just seemed like a logical step. “When you live in a community all your life and life has been good," Beverly says simply, “you have a responsibility to give something back."

By Mary Shafer

Michael Sieben
Photo by Richard Anderson

Among the degrees and documents that cover Michael Sieben's law office wall is a dated black-and-white photograph of a drugstore. It's a type of place you don't see much anymore—a spot where you could pick up your prescription and then amble over to the soda fountain for a cherry Coke or chocolate shake.

In eighth grade, Sieben worked as a soda jerk in that drugstore, which belonged to his grandfather and his great grandfather before him. While Sieben didn't continue the family's pharmaceutical tradition (“Wrong side of the brain," he jokes), the photograph's presence does speak to his deep commitment to his roots and an awareness of the privileges he inherited. “I don't take it for granted," he says.

Over the years, the 60-year-old civil litigation attorney, former state legislator, and University Law School graduate has made a number of gifts to the U, gestures rooted in a sense of obligation to give back to the institution where his grandmother, father, and two brothers also received degrees.

But there's one that seems to stand out. Sieben's most recent gift—to create the John S. Wright Award for CLA students majoring in African American and African Studies—was inspired by a deep personal connection.

Sieben grew up in Hastings, where he continues to practice law as a partner in Sieben Polk LaVerdiere & Dusich and where his family name is so prominent it's featured on street signs. John Wright has an equally successful career, but in the quite different world of academia, as an associate professor of African American and African Studies at the U. He grew up, by contrast, in the far less privileged world of north Minneapolis.

The connection between Sieben and Wright is a friendship dating back to their initial meeting as next-door neighbors in Middlebrook Hall. Over the years, the friendship has deepened, thanks in part to common interests—in chess, for one—and some fond memories, including a memorable camping trip out West.

To Sieben, the gift was a natural way to honor his friend. “He was such a great student," Sieben says, “very, very bright, an unusual, extraordinary person. I respect him greatly. I wanted to honor him and help make the campus a better place, particularly for minority students."

The fact that the gift will go to liberal arts students is also important to Sieben, whose own undergraduate degree from St. Cloud State University was in social studies.

“The College of Liberal Arts is so extraordinary," he says. “It prepares young people for life. I think that employers are increasingly

looking for people with broad education and deep skills. Our country's future belongs to those who are highly educated, and a good bachelor's education is where you start. You've got to get your fundamentals down and that's what CLA does. It prepares you."

At the same time, Sieben believes that private philanthropy is more important than ever to the University.

“We in Minnesota have strong public education from kindergarten through post-secondary," he says. “But the state is not supporting it as it has in the past. This gift is my small way of saying we need to do more to support public education"—to step in to fill the breach.

“In a broad sense, the U has been a huge engine for economic development that people take for granted. It's such an extraordinary place and we must recognize that. I feel strongly that those of us who have been blessed with education and experience should give back. We must make sure the country has good education available for everyone."

By Betsy Hiel

Betsy Hiel ('91) never studied journalism. But that hasn't kept her from garnering some of the highest accolades in the industry, including the Pew Fellowship in International Journalism. Actually, Hiel got her degree in Middle Eastern studies, which she later built on with a master's degree in Arab Studies from Georgetown University and further studies at American University in Cairo and Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Over the past decade, Hiel has reported from Iraq, Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, Jordan, Kuwait, Turkey, Israel, and the Palestinian territories—and that's just in the Middle East. She has been a foreign correspondent for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review for six years.

Heil wrote the following dispatch from Metula, Israel, during the recent Israeli-Lebanon conflict, as the city came under fire from Hezbollah.

“I have a panoramic ‘Katyusha view,' Allen Dallas says. Dallas, 39, a South African Jew, immigrated here in March to escape the high crime rate of his old homeland.

“Metula, you fall in love with it as soon as you see it," he says, waiting tables at the Alaska Inn. “When the snow melts, everything is blossoming and green. It's a very tranquil place—well, it was a tranquil place."

The tourists are gone, as are two-thirds of the 1,500 residents, driven away by Hezbollah's Katyusha rockets. Journalists from around the world, covering the war, fill half the Alaska's 70 rooms; its owner, Reuven Weinberg, is the son of Holocaust survivors who came to Israel in 1948 and bought the hotel in 1964.

In 1970, when Weinberg was 17, he was wounded in an attack by Palestinian guerrillas. “From (Yasser) Arafat's group in Lebanon," he clarifies. “Then, he made the trouble. And now this guy (Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah) makes the trouble. And when he will die, another guy will make the trouble."

Weinberg, 53, sounds utterly cheerful explaining the dismal prospects of the life-and-death struggle outside his hotel.

That is part of the contradiction found so frequently in this region: Many northern Israelis recount good friendships with Lebanese as readily as they do the border skirmishes, rocket attacks and occasional wars, all dating back decades.

All night long until dawn Tuesday, Hezbollah mortars and Israeli artillery dueled, shaking the Alaska Inn's windows and walls. Air sirens wailed and a loudspeaker ordered everyone into bomb shelters.

The Israelis are still launching airstrikes, too—to support their ground forces, they explain, despite a declared 48-hour stand-down after a misdirected strike killed about 56 Lebanese—and jet fighters regularly shriek overhead.

As night fell, young Israeli soldiers prepared to assault Hezbollah guerrillas—checking weapons and packs, painting each other's faces black and gray under dim street lights. Some joked and smoked cigarettes; others made last-minute phone calls to loved ones. Many expressed grim determination over what was to come.

A commander walked among the troops, reminding them of their missions, of how to avoid friendly fire and take care of wounded comrades.

The night seemed so still—until the soldiers move across the border into Lebanon, and the tanks, artillery, mortars and rockets erupt again.

Excerpted with the kind permission of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. For the full article—and more of Betsy Hiel's dispatches from the Middle East—go to http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/middleeast reports/s_464378.html.

By Laine Bergeson

With a master's degree from CLA's School of Journalism and Mass Communication and a B.A. in business from the University of Oregon, Paul Brainerd ('75) began his career in hopes of making a contribution to the world of publishing. As it turned out, he did much more than that. Thanks to Brainerd's entrepreneurial spirit, visionary thinking, and (let's not forget) world-class liberal arts education, he would do no less than revolutionize the publishing world, from Kabetogama to Kansas City to the Kremlin.

Paul and Debbi Brainerd
Photo by Stuart Issett

Brainerd is humbly describing PageMaker, the groundbreaking software program he designed that brought basic publishing capabilities to the masses. With its unveiling in 1985, PageMaker became the prime mover of desktop publishing—a phenomenon that turned the publishing world from an oligarchy, reserved for the few who could afford expensive publishing technology, to a democracy, where anyone with a few hundred bucks and a personal computer could transform an amateur idea into a world-class publication.

It is fitting, then, that as Russia began to develop its own democracy and conservative communist hardliners engineered the shutdown of all the national presses, pro-reform nationals like Yeltsin fought back by using PageMaker to design and disseminate their party's declaration of defiance. Brainerd's entrepreneurship helped change the course of Russian history.

Brainerd's remarkable story makes aspiring inventors wonder: What is it that catapults one person's idea to a realm beyond the ken of others? What transforms a vision from groundbreaking to truly revolutionary? Passion, for one, says Brainerd. “Passion is paramount to success," he muses. “It is critical to have a heartfelt connection with your work. If you don't have that, there is no reason to be doing it."

Another driving force is the willingness to take calculated risks. “I've taken risks throughout my career," says the 59-year old Seattle resident, who dropped all his other pursuits to start Aldus Corporation and unveil PageMaker. “Risk taking can be very exciting. You get to explore new things." But not just any risk will do; Brainerd stresses that each of his projects has pivoted not just on gut feeling, but also on thorough analysis and research—for which his liberal arts education richly prepared him, he says.

“Education taught me how to do research and present it," says Brainerd. “It was a building block. It provided me with the confidence and knowledge to do what I did as an entrepreneur."

Brainerd defines success as “making a difference in other people's lives." In the first part of his career, he achieved this by making communication tools accessible to organizations with limited resources, such as churches and non-profits (and, of course, the democracy advocates in the former Soviet Union). By 1994, though, Brainerd was ready to strive for success in other areas, and he sold Aldus to Adobe. The financial freedom that followed the sale allowed Brainerd to devote himself full-time to another lifelong passion: environmental conservation. Having spent his childhood in the forests of southern Oregon, Brainerd was determined to help preserve the natural beauty of the region.

“I've always had a close connection to the outdoors," says Brainerd, who founded The Brainerd Foundation, an organization focused on protecting the environmental quality of the Northwest and building citizen support for conservation efforts. The foundation makes grants, leverages funding, and encourages the involvement of other philanthropists—another cause close to Brainerd's heart. He founded the non-profit Social Venture Partners to catalyze philanthropic activity among his peers.

“SVP helps the next generation of people who want to give back," says Brainerd. And not just in dollars. The organization surpasses the norm (as do most groups with Brainerd at the helm)—encouraging participants not just to lend financial support but also to become involved with the causes they support. As Brainerd proudly attests, 65 percent of participants are actively involved.

In 1997, Brainerd and his wife, Debbi, found yet another way to give back to the community. With the purchase of 225 acres of land on Bainbridge Island, they founded IslandWood, a lifelong environmental learning center for children and families. Already, the center has distinguished itself as one of the most innovative environmental learning centers in the country.

Asked what he plans to add to his already chock-full schedule, the activist, philanthropist, and entrepreneur responds that, for now, he's focused on making all the current ventures “continue and excel." As for what isn't in his immediate future, Brainerd chuckles, “We are so busy—my wife made me promise: no new non-profits!" Perhaps for the time being, he'll have to be content with all the good he has already contributed to the world.

Scott Menchin

Observers across the political divide lament a lack of public participation in the American political process, most obvious in our perpetually low voter turnout.

At the same time, new technologies have opened up realms of civic engagement our forebears couldn't have imagined. Whether blogging for a cause, communing through MySpace, or signing on to a mass e-mail, the 21st century citizen can be active in a growing number of ways.

It raises the question: Is citizenship in the 21st century the same as it's always been? What does it mean to be a U.S. citizen today? Beyond voting, what are a good citizen's duties?

We had reporter Tim Brady comb the minds of CLA faculty who are studying civic responsibility in their three separate disciplines. Here's what they had to say:

Ronald Greene, Communication Studies

Ronald Greene believes that issues of civic responsibility should be viewed through a wide-angle lens.

“It's important to puncture the myth that if we just make better citizens, the world will be a better place. That assumes the responsibility for civic improvement rests solely with the individual." Green believes the institutions and structures of democracy are just as important.

It's important to create arenas where citizens feel comfortable in debate, he explains. “It's hard work getting together to solve civic problems. People are nervous communicating their political leanings in a public forum. Their feelings might be hurt; they may be proven wrong about an idea; they may be inclined to sublimate their expression by being ‘Minnesota nice.' But, says Greene, “Democracy works from the local level up."

Wendy Rahn, Political Science

Wendy Rahn argues that globalization itself is causing a decline in civic-mindedness around the world.

“The modern nation-state has less importance in the lives of individual citizens in a ‘globalized' world," she says. And that causes problems—“not just for commitments to conventional democratic virtues, such as being informed or voting in national elections," but also in terms of participation in “global citizenship."

In a recent study, Rahn examined groups of 14-year olds in 28 nations around the world. She discovered that the more “globalized" the subjects were, the less likely they were to be civically involved in their own nations. Yet, she found no evidence of greater involvement in newer, more globally oriented forms of civic-mindedness, such as concern for the environment.

Thomas Augst, English

Thomas Augst says the United States is simply still working out the kinks in its civic structure. Our democracy is a work-in-progress, he says, and current issues of civic engagement should be viewed in the context of their origins.

For instance, he explains, “The classical statesman-citizen figures of the founding era were working within much more limited parameters than we are today." Not only was the young country a fraction of its current size, but at the time, full citizenship was exclusive to white men of a certain economic status. Presumably, political dialogue isn't as difficult when citizens are so alike.

“One of the great challenges of civic engagement is finding a way to extend the classical ideals of democracy to a large and diverse populace," says Augst. And that, he adds, is one of the roles of higher education.

Adapted from a story by Rick Moore, University Relations. Until recently, Rebecca Mitchell had received minimal media attention—despite her receipt of the prestigious 2006 Harry S. Truman Scholarship (certainly no small potatoes). But Mitchell's most recent brush with fame has her worn out—from the multiple interviews and photo shoots that came with it.

The media arrived when Glamour magazine named Mitchell one of its top 10 college women in the nation for 2006. The honor recognizes campus and community involvement, excellence in the students' field of study, leadership experience, and unique, inspiring goals.

An honors student in biology, society, and the environment, Mitchell plans to pursue a combined doctorate and master's degree in public health. She's been on the parliamentary debate team for the last three years, worked as a research assistant at the U's Stem Cell Institute in embryonic stem cell research, and worked with the Medical School's Positive Youth Development Program.

Perhaps the most pivotal experience for Mitchell came during the summer of 2005, when she traveled to Kenya to do volunteer work, with dual placements at an orphanage and a local hospital. At the hospital, she worked at an STI (sexually transmitted infection) clinic, where many women who had been monogamous discovered they had contracted HIV from their husbands.

Moved by the women's plight, Mitchell set her sights on a career in public health with a focus on women's reproductive health. And, partly out of her dissatisfaction with the volunteer agency that arranged her placements in Kenya, she decided to make things easier for future volunteers. So she founded the Student Project Africa Network (SPAN), a nonprofit organization that she runs with four other students serving on a volunteer executive board.

Of course then there's the Glamour-ous life, three jam-packed September days in New York City, where Mitchell and her co-honorees spent time with top female professionals and were “wined and dined." The experience “celebrated the multifaceted woman," Mitchell says. “It was great."

The three-day whirlwind also gave Mitchell newfound respect for Glamour magazine. “It's a woman's struggle to not be put in a box," she says, adding that the magazine is dedicated to empowering women and recognizing their achievements.

Update: In February 2007, Mitchell was named one of USA Today's All-USA College Academic First Team. The group was selected from almost 600 students nominated by their schools.

Imagine a world in which Alzheimer's and schizophrenia are distant memories, war is unthinkable, and legislators routinely shake hands across the aisle—and world leaders across oceans and national borders. Imagine that people around the globe have plenty of clean water to drink, nourishing food to eat, and decent and affordable housing.

Imagine that every child and every adult has access to high-quality health care and that every young person has a fair shot at a college education.

Imagine all of this, and more. This is the world we aspire to and are striving to create at the University of Minnesota.

University Transformation

By any measure, the University of Minnesota is already a global leader in education and research that could put such a world within reach. But to be international leaders, we must prevail among formidable peers in a competitive higher education environment.

Through its ongoing transformation process, the University has set its sights high: to be counted among the world's top universities. That means not only being the best, but also doing the best. It means delivering quality in everything we do.

CLA's role is pivotal. The University can reach its goal only if every CLA academic program is among the best.

This isn't just the dean speaking. The report of the University-wide task force on the College of Liberal Arts says, “We unequivocally affirm the central importance of the liberal arts and a liberal education to the University of Minnesota, the state, and the nation. The report goes on to say, “For many Minnesotans, CLA is the face of the University. And it urges that the University “take advantage of CLA's unique disciplinary specialties and connections with the Twin Cities and global communities to foster powerful new avenues for research, teaching and communication.

This is a powerful mandate, and a powerful vote of confidence in our college.

Giant Steps

As we redefine and revitalize the University for this century, we are renewing our search for answers to the Big Questions that drive the human quest for learning. What kind of world do we want to live in? What kinds of discoveries and understanding will get us to where we want to go?

What do we know, what do we need to know, and what kinds of scientific and scholarly investigation need to be supported and sustained?

How, at the intersection of scientific and humanistic inquiry and cultural values, do we work together to solve problems and deliver the best possible outcomes? What kinds of technologies, investments, research paths, and public policies can move us forward?

How do we best share groundbreaking discoveries with our students and communities? How do we reach out to ensure that talented students from all walks of life can take advantage of what we have to offer?

These are huge questions, and they drive all that we do.

Change Grounded in Core Values

In CLA, there's no such thing as business as usual. Even our alumni magazine is striking out in new directions and sporting a new name—one that we believe captures what we're about in this college.

We call Reach our “new" magazine. But like the college whose stories it delivers to you, it will continue to focus, as CLA Today always has, on groundbreaking discoveries by our spectacular faculty and on the lives and contributions of our remarkable students, alumni, donors, and friends. It has a new look, but it is still dedicated to maintaining the highest editorial standards and to strengthening our valuable relationships with our alumni and friends.

This year, you'll see many new faces in CLA—extraordinary new faculty whose provenance includes the world's great universities, and talented new students from all walks of life, from all 50 states, and from cultures and nations throughout the world. You'll see new programs taking shape—including the writing initiative that is featured in this issue. You'll see new classrooms, new technologies, new collaborations, and new avenues of research.

This fall, we enrolled the best academically prepared and most diverse freshman class ever in our history, bringing access and opportunity off the pages of planning documents and into the lives of our students. Those students will explore the riches of a global and interdisciplinary curriculum that addresses the critical issues of our time in new and exciting ways and prepares them for a century whose directions and challenges we can only imagine.

And yet, however much we change, we remain committed to the core values that have positioned CLA at the heart of the University—dedication to sustaining the utmost excellence and integrity in research and teaching, and to sustaining deep respect for and engagement with students and communities across cultural, geographic, and disciplinary boundaries.

It's a new CLA, but it still belongs to you—our alumni and friends. As our future unfolds and we travel in new directions, I invite you to join us.

—Steven J. Rosenstone, Dean and McKnight Presidential Leadership Chair

In our “globalized" world, it's no longer a novelty to know a second language—or to be up to speed on international events. It's practically a necessity. Here in CLA, we believe global perspectives are fundamental to a liberal arts education. That's why we're so thrilled when students like Amelia Shindelar ('06), a double major in global studies and anthropology and president of the United Nations Student Association, snap up every opportunity to become more globally aware and engaged.

CLA's cupboards are lavishly stocked with gourmet ingredients for a global education. As for how to put it all together, we asked Amelia for her advice. She graciously shared her recipe.

• 1 insatiable appetite
• 2 years living in Europe
• 5 semesters of Arabic
• 2 semesters of Italian
• 2.5 years as a member of the United Nations Student Association
• 1 month in Tunisia
• 1 semester interning at Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights
• 19 family members who love to travel
• 2 passports (one expired)
• 426 books (an educated guess)
• 1 major in anthropology
• 1 major in global studies
• 1.5 hrs. per day of Minnesota Public Radio
• A generous sampling of foreign films
• 1 semester interning in the U's Human Rights Program
• At least 10 courses with an international perspective
• 3 years as alumni coordinator for the Minneapolis chapter of AFS intercultural exchange programs
• Plenty of patience and compassion
• One large sense of humor
• Passion, to taste

Toss all ingredients in one very large mixing bowl and agitate daily.

Chef's note: All of these things, and many that I cannot remember, have shaped me into the person I am, and a person I am proud to be. I am not suggesting that you go out and do the same things I've done; this is just what has worked for me. If you are more interested in China than the Middle East, go there instead. But whatever you do, don't leave out extensive language training. Languages not only give you the ability to communicate with people, they give you a different way to look at the world.

Amelia Shindelar will join the Peace Corps in February 2007.

A conversation with two of the masterminds of The Undergraduate Writing Initiative, with a department coming soon to CLA

“If you can't get your point across, then there's no point in having a point," says Anton Nikolov, a student in political science and history. We think he's on to something.

Hear that clicking sound? It's people at keyboards trying to get their points across—in reports and memos, newsletters, patients' charts, legal briefs, e-mails; to their bosses and colleagues, customers and constituencies. In a world of visual communication, “strong writing skills" remain near the top of every list of job qualifications.

So how is the University of Minnesota addressing the need for proficient writers in a wide variety of fields? With an innovative writing initiative, to be housed beginning fall 2007 in a new CLA department. The department will bring together faculty and resources from across the U—from the Center for Writing, the Department of Rhetoric, the Department of English, and the former General College.

The initiative is expected to make the U a national leader in the study and teaching of writing. Its more immediate purpose is to provide top-of-the-line writing instruction to all students, in every major, across the entire University.

As for what the writing initiative will look like on the ground, we've asked a few key players to give us the scoop. Here's what Kirsten Jamsen, director of the Center for Writing, and Laura Gurak, who will chair the new department in its first year, had to say.

Reach: So, what's the significance of the new writing initiative?

KJ: It's the affirmation—the assertion—that writing is essential to undergraduate education at the University of Minnesota. Writing is not something you “master" in one class and then move on. It's fundamental to the learning you do, no matter what discipline you study, and no matter what level. That's what makes this so exciting.

LG: It will bring all of the talents, research, skills, and outstanding teaching from around the U under one umbrella—into the same boat, in a way. We won't have one program for St. Paul students, one for CLA, one here, one there. We're bringing it all together. Writing instruction and practice will be an integral and ongoing part of every undergraduate student's education.

Reach: So, how is this approach different from “Writing Across the Curriculum," or other methods of writing instruction?

LG: The system that was new in the mid-80s—and really took over in the 90s—was kind of a checkbox system; you count up how many of your courses fulfill the writing requirement, and now you're done. What we learned during the task force was that students were saying, “I did more writing in course X, which doesn't have a ‘writing designator,' than I did in course Y, which did." We decided there should be a way to look across the curriculum and say, “How can writing be woven throughout?"

Reach: So writing instruction will be integrated into courses from the arts to business, engineering, agriculture, and health sciences?

LG: Yes. It's organized like a writing textbook. The first half is the generic principles and the second half is the forms and genres—the kinds of more specialized writing you'll do in different situations and disciplines, like when you go to work for Target or a hospital or state government. So we'll have both—strong freshman composition courses along with the across-the-disciplines part, for students wearing lots of different hats, learning to write for history, science, business, economics, medicine, the arts.

Reach: How do you develop a writing curriculum that can be used in such a broad range of disciplines?

KJ: The fundamental principles and the teaching methologies cut across disciplinary lines. And we'll have lots of training for faculty, the content people. The big questions to ask about our students when they graduate are: Are they fluent as writers? Do they know how to brainstorm, to draft, to revise, to edit, and to polish? The other question involves the interpreting of rhetorical situations—so a nursing student, for instance, can say, “I'm writing something to be read by patients, so it's going to be a lot different than what I write for doctors or wrote for my ethics class." I teach students how to “read" the environment and the audience, and adapt their communications to the rhetorical situation and to different media as well. These strategies for fluency can be used by students in all disciplines.

Reach: So basically, you're teaching them to be versatile writers.

KJ: Yes, we're teaching not just “good writing," but how to communicate in writing with real readers. Of course I want my students to walk out of here and write grammatically correct sentences and well-organized paragraphs. I also want them to be able to synthesize what they think and know into writing that really communicates. I want them to feel in control of their ability to communicate in just about any situation.

By Andi McDaniel

Deep in the bowels of Johnston Hall, you'll find a light on at 8:30 a.m. sharp. That's when freshmen in the new McGuire Academic Program (MAP) begin to stream in to room B-29 each morning to share breakfast toast, lounge on worn blue thrift-store couches, and check in with each other and their peer mentors about how their first year at the U is going.

MAP students chase after clues during "The Amazing Race, Edge-style"
Photo by Everett Ayoubzadeh

MAP just launched this fall, but already, MAP students have made themselves at home in this underground enclave, using the space and the resources it provides to tackle their first year head on. The 134 students in the program are enrolled in all seven freshman-admitting colleges across the campus, but CLA is “advising central."
MAP just launched this fall, but already, MAP students have made themselves at home in this underground enclave, using the space and the resources it provides to tackle their first year head on. The 134 students in the program are enrolled in all seven freshman-admitting colleges across the campus, but CLA is “advising central."

The high level of involvement pleases program coordinator Manisha Nordine. MAP's goal, she explains, is to help high-achieving students from low-income backgrounds—many of whom are first-generation college students—reach their full potential at the U. That means orienting them to aspects of college life that other students take for granted, from day one to graduation.

“What that translates to is connecting them to resources, providing them with advisers, and providing opportunities for meaningful relationships with their peers, in the form of peer mentors," she says.

Brianna Deal, one of MAP's seven peer mentors, says her own freshman year was a “whirlwind," and she sees great benefit to orienting students early on. “It's just so valuable to have somebody reach out to you and say, ‘Here's what we have to offer, here's how I can help you. I want to get to know you better and help you deal.'

The “McGuire Edge" gives students a jump start. Over six days, students get to know their peer mentors, each other, and the campus. One of the more popular activities this fall was “The Amazing Race, Edge-style," a campus-wide scavenger hunt that helps teams of students learn their way around.

Carrying the Baton

y providing support to students from low-income backgrounds throughout their college careers, MAP functions as a sort of next step for programs such as LearningWorks and Admission Possible, which serve middle- and high-school students. In fact, to qualify for MAP, students must be alumni of one of those programs, or be “McGuire scholars," students who have been selected for scholarships funded by the McGuire Foundation.

MAP is one of several new University/K-12 outreach initiatives that CLA is leading—all reflecting the college's staunch commitment to access. The purpose of increasing access is not just to level the higher education playing field for Minnesota's young people but also to better reflect and serve Minnesota's rapidly changing population.

“We're constantly embracing new immigrant populations," says Nordine. “Students represent these new communities and multicultural identities as well as traditional communities." Such diversity “prepares all students to be citizens not only of Minnesota and the U.S.—but also of the world," says Deal.

The ripples will spread as students take their education with them into communities and workplaces throughout Minnesota and beyond—bringing about lasting social change. “The revolution is going to occur," says Nordine, “as these students enter the workforce. It's in their respective jobs—in their relationships with majority populations in their jobs—that the change is going to happen. That's when race and class bias are going to lose their grip—because diversity will be part of people's everyday experiences."

Of course, if MAP didn't inspire students, all this talk about access would be just that—talk. But already, there are clear signs that the program's goals resonate powerfully with student needs. Asked how he knows their efforts are paying off, peer mentor Mike Clark says he just sees it in their faces.

“They don't have to come in here, but they do," Clark says, referring to MAP headquarters. “They could easily be going out to a coffee shop or restaurant with their friends, but no—they come in here. Because they want to be with this community." Nordine grins, “We have students waiting in the morning to come in, and the place is still buzzing at the end of the day."

As the University forges ahead to implement the recommendations of the various task forces that have been charged with strengthening the U, it's worth noting that the McGuire Academic Program advances several of those recommendations—namely, those related to outreach, access, and diversity. “The health of the McGuire Program," says Manisha, “reflects the health of the rest of the University." Judging from the crowded couches in MAP's Johnston headquarters, the University is in good health indeed.

Steven Manson
Photo by Kelly Macwilliams

For years, McKnight Land Grant Professor of Geography Steven Manson says, many of the models that scientists have used to predict how humans will act have discounted the role that cultural values play in human behavior.

Rational choice theory, on which such models are based, assumes a certain universality to human decision making. Whether Kenyan or Canadian, we are all, according to rational choice theory, rational actors: Given a complete picture of a situation, we will act logically within it. And we make choices that bring us closer to what we value: money, power, health, and happiness.

But as many scholars in the field of science studies have shown, when push comes to shove, we are, well, only human. When we are the mice in the maze, we don't necessarily make cold calculations based on narrow self interest. Cultural values, traditions, and habits all get in the way of our acting “rationally." Indeed, these influences can help us make better decisions—or sometimes not.

Over the last 40 years, explains Manson, many have come to doubt the validity of rational choice theory because it doesn't account for social and cultural factors. “A lot of our decision-making isn't centered on ‘us,' says Manson. “It's centered on ‘us' within a larger context."

Sometimes, that larger cultural context influences us when we least expect it. “We can have an almost encyclopedic knowledge of everything from safety ratings to fuel efficiency when we're buying a car," Manson says. “But when people are asked about the cars they buy, they tend to say that they buy Hondas because their parents buy Hondas." As social creatures who exist in the context of culture and family, “we can always question, reconfigure, or reject this social context," he adds, but we cannot fully escape it.

Rational choice theory is an elegant and powerful way of answering many questions, Manson grants, but we also need alternative approaches. That's why he's developing “computational intelligence modeling," a model of analyzing human decision making that, he says, attempts to “capture some of the social dynamics and personal biases that influence human behavior instead of just ignoring them."

Recently, Manson used computational intelligence to help officials in the Southern Yucatan build accurate land use simulations. Using anthropological accounts of local Mexican culture that were formerly dismissed by scientists as too qualitative, Manson's programs produced land use scenarios more attuned to the vagaries of the local culture—and therefore more likely to become reality.

The Scientific Mystique: Intro | Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four

Karen-Sue Taussig
Photo by Leo Kim

Taussig, a medical anthropologist, finds cultural values and power relationships at every turn in her examination of the human genome project, the multi-million dollar research project that has yielded revolutionary new insights into the genetic code of human beings.

Taussig recalls the project's earliest stages, when Nobel prize-winning molecular biologist Walter Gilbert was traveling around the country trying to generate support from the public. “He would pull out a CD-ROM and announce, ‘This is you'—suggesting that a human genome could be encoded onto a single electronic device. Gilbert's dramatic demonstration appealed to certain cultural assumptions he shared with his audiences, including the assumption that life is reducible to molecular biological terms.

Genetic research projects like the human genome project thrive, Taussig says, in an individualist culture that values self-discovery, self-actualization, and immortality. By reducing everything from eye color to intellectual aptitude to the level of alterable genes, genetic researchers appear to promise to make controllable that which once seemed out of our reach. “The idea that we are free to choose our biology feels empowering," Taussig notes.

These values and expectations are so ubiquitous, she says, that it's easy to miss how profoundly they affect our thinking about what counts as science and what kinds of projects we choose to fund.

They also leave us vulnerable.

“People are sold a bill of goods," Taussig says. “Scientists claim that there will be these dramatic interventions into human health." But reality doesn't always match up. “Every single gene therapy trial has failed utterly," she notes.

Taussig doesn't oppose the genome project and the genetic research it has spawned. “Intellectually, it is incredibly interesting science," rife with the potential to advance human health, she says.

But she can't help but point out that support for such flashy science sometimes means forgoing less glamorous, but more reliable, scientific strategies for improving the lives of those who need it most.

“If we really wanted to improve the health of Americans, we'd have more early childhood health interventions, universal healthcare, nutritional programs, those kinds of things," she says. “And if we wanted to improve the health of the world, we'd have universal vaccination, mosquito netting for malaria prevention, simple things that are inexpensive but take political will."

Just as Schurman hopes her work will help move scientists toward greater self-reflection, Taussig wants to encourage citizens to reflect more about the forces that shape our perspective about what science is, and can do—and what it isn't, and can't do.

We have such a faith in science in the United States," she says. “I want people to realize that there is a politics to science."

The Scientific Mystique: Intro | Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four

Rachel Schurman
Photo by Karl Krohn

That label may seem harsh, but Schurman, a sociologist studying the “culture" of science, isn't surprised by it.

“Biotechnology workers—particularly the scientists—have a sense of themselves as apolitical and activists as political, which has made it easy for them to dismiss activists as ‘crazies,' she explains.

But while they may not realize it, scientists are embedded in culture too, Schurman says. “Their ways of thinking and responding to the work they are doing are as much shaped by the norms of scientific culture as the activists' views are shaped by their own norms."

In their very first science courses, Schurman notes, scientists begin to internalize a conception of science as a pure, objective, value-free enterprise beholden to nothing but the truth. It's not difficult to see why, Schurman says: science courses rarely include sustained inquiry into the economic demands, cultural desires, and historical contingencies that make science more than just a pristine quest for knowledge. Instead, students are immersed in the nitty-gritty tasks of designing experiments, collecting data, and conducting analyses.

Not surprisingly, that trend continues once they've earned their degrees and start working in laboratories full time. “They are thinking about the particular scientific problem they are working on, the scientific puzzle of the day," says Schurman.

Over time, the boundary between doing science and thinking about its repercussions in the world has become rigorously patrolled. “In the professional world of science," Shurman explains, “it is heretical to ask questions about the possible social, political, and economic effects of technologies such as genetic engineering and the ethical concerns they may generate."

Schurman is quick to note that many scientists do think about the values that infuse their work. They worry about new technologies and their applications, and some even advocate for broader, more democratic discussion of the applications of scientific knowledge. The 100,000-member Union of Concerned Scientists, formed at M.I.T. in 1969, for instance, speaks out regularly about misuses of science and technology in society.

Still, those scientists who do want to think and write about values and politics risk ostracism from the larger scientific community, Schurman says, if they go too far in their criticism, publish in non-scientific journals, or, worse yet, move into public policy work full time. “Those who interact with the public are seen as tainted by political and cultural forces," she explains.

Schurman hopes that her work will prompt increased attention among scientists to ethical concerns. Acknowledgment of their susceptibility to social and cultural influences, she says, is a crucial prelude to ethical thinking—and even, it can be said, to good science.

“Because we live in a social world, it makes no sense to think of new knowledge and technology as coming into a neutral environment. Political, economic, and social relationships, as well as cultural norms, forged out of history, shape every new technology and every scientific development."

The Scientific Mystique: Intro | Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four

Kathleen Collins
Photo by Cameron Wittig

Collins, assistant professor of political science, is an expert on Central Asian clan politics. She gained her expertise gathering data from the field—at some personal risk.

In regions where Islamic culture is especially conservative, Collins several times found herself grabbed by disapproving men in public bazaars when she was walking alone—despite adopting conservative dress and often a headscarf. Even in more secular areas, foreigners are a target of ordinary crime, she says. In northern Kyrgyzstan, she was mugged. “They knocked me down to steal my purse, coat, gloves, and passport belt," she says. “I was black and blue for a month."

Such is the lot of the Western female researcher in the Islamic former Soviet states of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Kazakhstan, as well as Azerbaijan, in the Caucasus. “It's extraordinarily hard research to do," Collins says. “Mostly, people are very kind to me. But just practical things—traveling alone, taking a bus or a cab, the way you dress—all of those things become real security issues."

Collins persists because the region is so poorly understood. “There has been little empirical research on the question of Islam and Islamic mobilization," she says. “Think tanks and journalists often make unfounded arguments which are taken seriously by policy makers."

While doing research for her recent book, Clan Politics and the Transformation of Regimes in Central Asia, Collins began noticing a post-Soviet, Islamic resurgence in the region. Her current project examines that trend, which she says stems partly from disillusionment about the United States' failure to support nascent pro-democracy movements in the area. Last year, for instance, Azerbaijan held an election that most observers believe was fixed. Yet despite pledges of support by the American ambassador, the U.S. State Department did not publicly criticize the electoral fraud or back opposition protests.

For most of the last decade, Central Asians did not generally consider Islam and democracy antithetical, Collins says. “In the early 1990s, the idea of democratization was much stronger than any sort of religious resurgence," she explains. But as U.S. democratization efforts failed, people's high hopes for democracy and a better life were dashed. “In part, I am finding that the increasing attraction—especially among youth—to Islamist ideas is driven by this disillusionment with democracy and the West," says Collins.

By focusing so intensely on the Middle East, the United States has neglected Muslim Central Asia, Collins believes—and does so at its own peril. “Think about where these trends might take us over the long term. What is this region going to look like?" she says. “Where are these corrupt, authoritarian governments going? What will happen when these weak states fall apart?"

“Hopefully, we won't see a dramatic rise in anti-American Islamism, as in Pakistan, or state collapse, civil war, and the creation of another Afghanistan or Somalia in this region. But that is not out of the range of possibility."

Colin Kahl
Photo by Cameron Wittig

As part of his more general interest in “failed states," Kahl has followed the Iraq war with a scholar's trademark rigor. While he has previously focused on stresses and disruptions that weaken states from the inside—environmental destruction, demographic pressures, and resource scarcity, for instance—in this case he's interested in disturbances from outside, such as intervention by “strong states" such as the United States.

“You can think of the first project as kind of examining the causes of state failure," says Kahl, an assistant professor of political science. “I then became interested in interventions into failed states, and that led me to U.S. conduct in interventions."

From January 2005 to August 2006, Kahl was a Council on Foreign Relations Fellow placed at the Department of Defense to gain on-the-ground experience related to his research. He spent time at three military pre-deployment training centers, observing U.S. units as they prepared for service in Iraq and Afghanistan. He also attended classes and conducted interviews at the Army's Judge Advocate General's School in Charlottesville, Va., and pored over extensive unclassified Pentagon documents and after-action reports from returning combat units.

In July, Kahl headed to Iraq for four days, to conduct interviews in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone and at Camp Victory, the U.S. military headquarters at the former Baghdad airport. It was an intense and unnerving experience, he recalls. “We got shelled every day I was there."

One result of Kahl's experience is a 20-page article recently published in Foreign Affairs magazine. In it, he argues that despite well-publicized military abuses like the alleged massacre of civilians in Haditha, the American military has done a better job of avoiding civilian casualties than many critics assert.

Kahl knows he is courting controversy. “People on the left are going to see my article as too apologetic for the military, and people on the right are going to think that it's too critical," he says. Indeed, the American record in Iraq is not unblemished, Kahl acknowledges, but he contends that most units have behaved within the confines of the laws of war, at least in their treatment of civilians.

“Relative to U.S. conduct in other wars in the 20th century and the conduct of wars historically by all powers, the United States has done a fairly exemplary job in living up to its commitments under international law not to target civilians," he says.

Kahl is now reporting on another aspect of the Americans' Geneva Convention compliance— how well the United States is meeting its obligation to provide for basic security and public services in Iraq. So far, it looks as though the verdict might be less positive.

“In many ways, the United States has not lived up to its obligation to provide for a secure and stable Iraq. The current strategy is not working," Kahl argues, noting in particular the absence of sufficient resources (including reconstruction dollars).

“To succeed, the U.S. has to fundamentally alter its strategy. That includes opening negotiations with all relevant parties, with the aim of setting firm conditions for continued U.S. presence; and supporting steps toward national reconciliation."

This is quintessential Kahl—a kind of up-front, unsparing appraisal that Kahl contends is impossible if academics are unwilling to examine military culture close up.

“I doubt that people who don't have those first-hand experiences can really understand," he says.

“I think the academy is not well served by people estranged from the military because they feel so uncomfortable with it. If you critique it from a distance, you're missing a lot of the story."

Ann Hironaka
Photo by Cameron Wittig

Hironaka thus turned from activism to academia, earning her Ph.D. at Stanford in 1998. Today, she is studying modern civil wars as an associate professor of sociology at the University.

Before 1945, Hironaka notes, civil conflicts were contained, decisive events lasting just a few years. Not anymore. Today, they are enduring struggles—roughly three times longer than earlier conflicts—fueled by animosities that often reignite even before the ink dries on the peace treaties.

But why? That little-considered question is Hironaka's focus. In her book Neverending Wars (2005), she posits several explanations. One, ironically, is the liberation of colonies that marked the end of the colonial era after World War II. As the great powers abandoned their colonies to self-rule, they left behind power vacuums—newly sovereign states with recognized national borders but little in the way of functioning institutions or centralized authority.

Whereas European and American bureaucracies had evolved over decades and centuries, new Third World nations were forced to adopt new systems of governance almost overnight. The result was a bevy of extremely fragile, disorganized states with unstable power structures.

"In a sense," Hironaka writes, "the international system has locked the problems of states into specific territorial arrangements, and perversely created conditions that encourage lengthy civil wars in recently independent states."

Another problem, a legacy of the Cold War, is outside intervention. "Civil wars tend to be lengthened when there is intervention, especially when there is intervention on both sides," Hironaka says.

During the Cold War, the United States and Soviet Union routinely intervened in regional civil wars in weak states, providing money, arms, and military bases, and also training soldiers and sending in troops. Today, interventions by strong states are practically the norm. And so, increasingly, are interventions by non-state players, such as organizations like Hezbollah in Lebanon, and al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Intervention is little studied, except in legalistic terms, says Hironaka. Debates focus on whether a U.S. intervention is constitutional, for example. But that's not the issue, she says. "To me, what really matters is the huge amount of resources that the United States is putting into the various conflicts around the world—and other countries, too, not just the United States. These conflicts wouldn't be able to last as long without external resources."

Hironaka's work to date has been about understanding root causes. Down the road, she hopes to move into more solution-based work aimed at U.S. policymakers. "If we knew why states fight these wars, and continue to fight them, we could talk about what is reasonable," she says. But the issues are far from black and white, she cautions.

Indeed, protracted civil wars may not be the worst of the world's evils. Civil wars often begin as insurgencies against oppressive regimes. Interventions to end them could squash pro-democracy and human rights movements and fortify dictatorships. "Do we want that?" Hironaka asks. "If we're not willing to ask such questions, then we really can't have this discussion."