PoliBlog

Rosalind Wright, M.D., M.P.H., a professor of medicine and public health at Harvard University, will discuss “The Role of Psychological Stress in Asthma and Other Atopic Disorders” on Thursday, April 22 at 12:30 p.m. in Thompson 620.  This is the final talk in this year’s Mellon-funded CPPA Grants Workshop Speaker Series.

Wright is Associate Professor of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and also a faculty member in the Department of Environmental Health at the Harvard School of Public Health. Professor Wright is known for work that incorporates environmental considerations into the treatment of disease, and helped to pioneer the concept that social factors can be significant contributors to such chronic conditions as childhood asthma.  She is co-investigator for the Asthma Coalition on Community, Environment, and Social Stress, a multi-method, longitudinal study based in Boston.

Professor Wright will focus in her talk on evidence linking psychological factors to childhood asthma, allergy risk, and lung function.  Wright’s research shows that beginning in utero, aberrant immune responses shaped by disruptions to the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis can contribute to lifelong problems with lung structure and function.  Both pre- and post-natal emotional stress—including stress produced by violence and chronic poverty—can disrupt HPA functioning and influence neuroendocrine, autonomic, and immune inflammatory processes that affect asthma and other atopic disorders.  In short, according to Wright, psychological stress disrupts the same biological pathways as pollutants from dense urban traffic or tobacco smoke. Wright’s findings have important implications for how physicians talk with and treat their patients, and also for public policies that address such problems as domestic violence and urban poverty.

While at UMass, Wright will also work with Assistant Professor of Resource Economics and Public Policy Sylvia Brandt, who is developing a grant proposal for external support of a transdisciplinary project on the social costs of childhood asthma.  Brandt is a Fellow in the 2009-2010 CPPA Grants Workshop, which is supported by the UMass Amherst Office of Faculty Development’s Mutual Mentoring Initiative, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

This talk is free and open to the public.  Brownbag lunches are welcome.

For more information, contact Susan Newton, Associate Director for Research at CPPA (413-577-0478, snewton @pubpol .umass. edu)

Jane Fountain, Professor of Political Science and Public Policy, will discuss “Deinstitutionalization and Reinstitutionalization in the Virtual State” on Monday, April 5, at 12 p.m. in Thompson 620.  Fountain is also the founder and director of the National Center for Digital Government and the director of the UMass Science, Technology and Society Initiative.

Professor Fountain’s talk, part of the Center for Public Policy and Administration’s Spring 2010 Faculty Colloquium, will address current claims that social networking and associated technologies and media have the power to transform government and civil society.  These claims emphasize the wisdom of crowds, the power of citizens to solve policy problems, and the extraordinary ability to coordinate and communicate using digital media.  However, these claims ignore or discount the role of power, politics, institutions and other core elements of governance.

Fountain is the author of the award-winning Building the Virtual State: Information Technology and Institutional Change, and her research on technology and governance has appeared widely in scholarly journals and edited collections focused on science, technology, and politics and public policy.  Fountain’s work has been supported by multiple grants from the National Science Foundation, and a generous gift from PriceWaterhouseCoopers enabled her to establish the Women in the Information Age Project during her tenure at Harvard University, where she served on the faculty of the Kennedy School of Government for 16 years before assuming her position at UMass Amherst.

Fountain is currently a member of the World Economic Forum Global Advisory Council on the Future of Government, as well as the American Bar Association blue ribbon commission on the future of e-Rulemaking.  She has served on several advisory bodies for organizations including the Social Science Research Council, the Internet Policy Institute, and the National Science Foundation.

Fountain holds a Ph.D. from Yale University in organizational behavior and political science, and has been a Radcliffe Fellow, a Yale Fellow, and a Mellon Fellow.

Professor Fountain’s talk is free and open to the public.  Brownbag lunches are welcome.

James Kwak, a former management consultant at McKinsey and Company and a current law student at Yale University, will speak on “13 Bankers: The Political Background to the Financial Crisis” on Wednesday, April 21 at 12:00 p.m. in Thompson 620.  The talk is co-sponsored by the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) and the Center for Public Policy and Administration (CPPA).

Kwak’s presentation will be based on the just-released book, 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown, which he co-authored with Simon Johnson, the Ronald A. Kurtz (1954) Professor of Entrepreneurship at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

13 Bankers documents how a handful of banks became so large and powerful that, by the end of the 20^th century, they were able to reshape our political landscape and produce a tolerance for excessive risk-taking that ultimately led to the current financial crisis and recession. The book also examines how both the Bush and Obama administrations bailed out the banks without securing meaningful reforms, setting the stage for another financial crisis, continued government bailouts, and an ever-growing national debt.

Ultimately, Johnson and Kwak show that the current crisis isn’t simply economic but a problem of political economy, and one that can be addressed only when policymakers find the courage to break up the big banks and impose stricter regulations. 

Niall Ferguson (Harvard University) notes that Johnson’s and Kwak’s “analysis of the unholy inter-twining of Washington and Wall Street—a cross between the gilded age and a banana republic—is essential reading,” and Bill Moyers calls 13 Bankers “a disturbing and painstakingly researched account of how the banks wrenched control of government and society out of our hands—and what we can do to seize it back.”

James Kwak received an A.B. in Social Studies from Harvard University and an M.A. and a Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Berkeley.  Both he and Simon Johnson, who previously was chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, have published articles in many leading publications, including The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The Economist.  They co-founded The Baseline Scenario, a widely-read blog about economics, finance and public policy.

This talk is free and open to the public.  Brownbag lunches are welcome.

Gad Barzilai, an international expert on comparative politics and law, will speak on “Beyond Relativism: Where is Political Power in Legal Pluralism?” on Friday, April 16 at 12:00 p.m. in Thompson 620.  The talk is part of the Center for Public Policy and Administration’s Mellon-funded Grants Workshop Speaker Series in collaboration with the Departments of Political Science and Legal Studies.

Barzilai is Professor of International Studies, Law & Political Science in the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington.  Prior to 2005, he was a professor in the Department of Political Science at Tel Aviv University.  He is active in international, Israeli and Israeli-Palestinian human rights organization and has served as an advisor to politicians and NGOs on issues related to law and politics.  He is the author of the award-winning book, Communities and Law: Politics and Cultures of Legal Identities, and has helped to garner more than $4 million in support of academic projects under his direction.

Barzilai will focus in his talk on how theoretical constructs of legal pluralism—multiple legal practices in various jurisdictions—have challenged traditional notions of jurisprudence, but also on how research concerning legal pluralism can be enhanced through acknowledging the role of political power.  According to Barzilai, the politics of identities, non-ruling communities, and neo-liberal globalization are all sites of political power in the praxis of legal pluralism, and the dynamic interactions of local, national, and global agents generate forms of power that are often obscured behind the rhetoric of globalized pluralism. Barzilai will propose new constructs that can enable scholars to unveil political power in the context of decentralized legal pluralities.

While at UMass, Barzilai will also mentor Assistant Professor of Legal Studies and Public Policy David Mednicoff, who is developing a grant proposal for support of his research on the rule of law in contemporary Arab societies.  Mednicoff is a Fellow in the 2009-2010 CPPA Grants Workshop, which is supported by the UMass Amherst Office of Faculty Development’s Mutual Mentoring Initiative, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

This talk is free and open to the public.  Brownbag lunches are welcome.