Faculty News

Lawrie Balfour is Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Associate Professor for Distinguished Teaching at the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University, where this spring she will offer an interdisciplinary course on slavery and the politics of memory

Several colleagues are looking at links between politics and money:

• David Leblang is writing about currency crises, democracy and globalization.
• Jim Savage has a new article about the politics of pork, aka earmarks.
• Herman Schwartz is examining the political consequences of the housing bubble. Look for Herman’s book on the bubble this spring.

Carol Mershon published three articles on legislative party switching this year and has a book on the subject coming out in the Spring.

David O’Brien has been appointed a Commissioner of the Japan-US Conference on Cultural and Educational Interchange and the Japan-US Friendship Foundation. Three of his books have just been issued in new editions.

The August annual meeting of the American Political Science Association featured an “Author Meets Critics” Roundtable on Eric Patashnik’s new book just out from Princeton University Press.

Steven Rhoads’ 1985 book The Economist’s View of the World continues to get attention: its Amazon.com sales rankings shot up after an August mention at a widely read social science blog. Steve is considering a second edition.

Vivian Thomson is directing the Panama Initiative, an international collaborative teaching and research effort sponsored by President Casteen, Provost Garson, and Vice Provost Grossman. Read about the Institute’s spring 2008 student trip.

Denise Walsh is on leave this year at Dartmouth College where she has a fellowship at the Dickey Center for International Understanding.

Also at the August meeting of the American Political Science Association, Vesla Weaver received the Best Dissertation Award from the Race and Ethnic Politics section for her dissertation: “Frontlash: Race and the Politics of Punishment.”

China specialist Brantly Womack jetted to Guangxi Province’s Social Science Institute for a conference, to Beijing to deliver a paper at the China Foreign Affairs University, and serves on the Academic Review Committee for the Institute of Political Science of Taiwan’s Academia Sinica. Brantly also presented several papers in Vietnam this year. Read what he has to say about the U.S., China and Vietnam.

Emeritus News

Matthew Holden, Jr. has given several talks this year about the Justice Department and American politics; here is some of his analysis. This November, Theda Skocpol of Harvard will give the second Matthew Holden, Jr. lecture at Jackson State University; Ira Katznelson offered the first one last November.

In Memoriam

The Department lost a cherished member on March 30. David Newsom, who held the Hugh S. and Winifred B. Cumming Memorial Chair in International Affairs, was an accomplished diplomat, an admired and adored colleague and a wonderful person. He will be missed. His obituary from the Washington Post is here.

In July we learned the very sad news that Dr. Allan Frederick Moore ’99 died of injuries he sustained in a motor vehicle crash in suburban Philadelphia. Allan was a graduate of the Department’s Honors Program, a Jefferson Scholar and a Truman Scholar, and the recipient of many other awards. His many contributions to our community life during his time on Grounds were detailed in a University news story the year he graduated. Moore received his M.D. from Vanderbilt University in 2003 and was a fellow in endocrinology at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He was Board Certified in Internal Medicine and was conducting research at Massachusetts General and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in the area of diabetes complications and disease prevention. A brief obituary appears here.