Archive for February, 2006

Will America Decline?

dnorris10 February 28th, 2006

David Hendrickson, professor of political science at Colorado College, addresses the question, “Will America Decline?” at the final Great Decisions lecture on Tuesday, Feb. 28, at The College of Wooster. The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will be held in Gault Recital Hall of Scheide Music Center (525 E. University St.), beginning at 7:30 p.m.

Hendrickson will examine a range of military, economic, ideological, and cultural factors. The uses and limits of military power, especially as revealed by the war in Iraq and the prospective war against Iran, are one key topic of investigation. Others include the serious weakening of American finances, the erosion of the perceived legitimacy of America’s position in the world, and the cultural influences at home that hobble the development of a solvent grand strategy. “America,” says Hendrickson, “is not as strong as she seems, but not as weak as she appears because most of the factors pointing to American decline may be reversed by prudent national policies.”

Hendrickson, who has taught at Colorado College since 1983, received a Ph.D. in Political Science from Johns Hopkins University and a B.A. in history from Colorado College. He teaches courses in American foreign policy and international relations, and is the author of five books, including The Imperial Temptation: The New World Order and America’s Purpose (1992) and Empire of Liberty: The Statecraft of Thomas Jefferson (1990), which was nominated by Oxford University Press for a Pulitzer Prize. He was a book reviewer for Foreign Affairs from 1994 to 1998 and has published essays in a variety of foreign policy journals, including Foreign Affairs, The National Interest, Ethics and International Affairs, and World Policy Journal. He was the recipient in 1989 of the Burlington Northern Faculty Achievement Award at Colorado College and has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Olin Foundation, and the Council on Foreign Relations.

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Will China Democratize - and Should It?

dnorris10 February 21st, 2006

Marc Blecher, a member of the politics department and the East Asian Studies program at Oberlin College, will address the question, “Will China Democratize - and Should It?” at the next Great Decisions lecture on Tuesday, Feb. 21, at The College of Wooster. The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will be held in Gault Recital Hall of Scheide Music Center (525 E. University St.), beginning at 7:30 p.m.

Blecher will consider several scenarios on China’s future, particularly the possible place and meaning of democracy. He will look at various outlooks for the political future, including a smooth transition to parliamentary politics (”democratization”), a virtual collapse as in the former USSR and Eastern Europe, and a continuation of the present market authoritarianism. “The ‘Washington consensus’ is that the present régime is unsustainable - that rapid capitalist development is bound to bring political liberalization in tow,” said Blecher. “In fact, there are good reasons to question that.

“There is a danger of projecting our own political values and experience onto other countries where they don’t fit,” he added. “The ability of China to engineer its transition to stunning capitalist growth was directly dependent on its maintenance of political authoritarianism, including the terrible 1989 crackdown. Most of the leadership, and many ordinary Chinese as well, including some of the Tiananmen protesters, now understand this.”

The present generation of top leadership shows no inclination to democratize from above, according to Blecher, especially after seeing the problems it caused former top leaders in South Korea. “The example of Russia shows many Chinese the virtues of their present course,” said Blecher. “Can they muddle through a while longer, or will this increase crisis tendencies? I used to think the latter, but it’s now been going on for more than 25 years, and except for 1989, no destabilizing political crisis has hit yet. Indeed, perhaps going further, ‘market authoritarianism’ will prove a viable model for China over the medium term.”

Blecher, a graduate of Cornell University, earned his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. He specializes in Chinese politics, and has published five books as well as dozens of articles on local politics, popular participation, and political economy. He teaches courses on these subjects as well as Asian politics and political economy, Marxist theory, and comparative politics. His current research focuses on workers’ politics in contemporary China, and the political economy of urban space in a small Chinese city.

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Sex, Brains and Mice: Biological Influences on Cognitive Abilities

dnorris10 February 21st, 2006

Amy Jo Stavnezer, assistant professor of psychology at The College of Wooster, will address some of the intellectual differences between males and females when she presents “Sex, Brains and Mice: Biological Influences on Cognitive Abilities” at the first Faculty at Large lecture of the spring semester on Tuesday, Feb. 21, at 11 a.m. in Room 009 of Severance (Chemistry) Hall (943 College Mall). Admission is free and open to the public.

An animal researcher, Stavnezer will discuss the biological basis of several cognitive sex differences, including the assertion that, on average, human males have better visual-spatial representations of the environment and can more accurately mentally rotate three-dimensional objects, while females have better verbal fluency and better recall for objects in a spatial configuration. These differences have long been attributed mainly to the influence of testosterone during prenatal and pubertal development. “Decades of research have indicated that having a certain level of testosterone during critical periods results in ‘male-typical’ behavior and physiology,” said Stavnezer. “Recent research, however, indicates that the Y chromosome also influences behavior and physiology in mice.”

Stavnezer has found that animals with a Y chromosome, even when testosterone levels were low, performed better on visual-spatial tasks. “This indicates that the research where sex chromosome status was overlooked and only hormone levels were manipulated may have been missing a piece of the puzzle,” she said. “Males and females generally differ in testosterone levels, but they also differ in their sex chromosome complement. As geneticists locate more functional genetic sequences on the Y chromosome, this sex chromosome difference may prove to be rather important in directing sex differences in behavior and physiology. If, in fact, the Y chromosome and testosterone are both able to impart ‘male-typical’ visual-spatial ability, the evolutionary importance of this skill may be reinforced.”

Stavnezer, who joined the faculty at Wooster in 2003, has been working with sex differences - though not always with an emphasis on the Y chromosome - since she began graduate school. Her interest in rodent research dates back to her undergraduate days at Allegheny College where she took a course in physiology and behavior as a sophomore. Her undergraduate senior thesis focused on the effects of pre- and post-natal lead exposure on the ability to delay lever-press responding in rats. After receiving her B.S. from Allegheny College (1994), Stavnezer earned her M.S. (1998) and Ph.D. (2000) from the University of Connecticut. Her published research includes “Integration of computer technology into an introductory level neuroscience laboratory,” in Teaching of Psychology and “Spatial ability of XY sex-reversed female mice,” in Behavioral Brain Research. A member of the Society for Neuroscience and several other professional organizations, Stavnezer taught at Skidmore College before coming to Wooster.

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Wither the United Nations

dnorris10 February 14th, 2006

James Sutterlin, Distinguished Fellow in UN Studies at Yale University as well as director of research and adjunct professor at the Long Island University Center for the Study of International Organization, will address the question, “Whither the United Nations?” at the next Great Decisions lecture on Tuesday, Feb. 14, at The College of Wooster. The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will be held in Gault Recital Hall of Scheide Music Center (525 E. University St.), beginning at 7:30 p.m.

“In September 2003, Kofi Annan declared that the United Nations found itself ‘at a fork in the road’ in the face of critical global challenges,” said Sutterlin. “The Secretary-General insisted, and practically every country including the U.S., agreed that to meet these challenges the UN required fundamental reforms. The challenges facing the UN include the U.S. policy of preemptive defense and the Iraq War, terrorism, genocide and crimes against humanity, weapons of mass destruction, extreme poverty, and pandemic disease.

“The United States places great emphasis on administrative reform,” added Sutterlin. “The oil-for-food program has centered attention on administrative failures of the UN. The program needs to be seen in perspective. The policies that the UN is following and the reforms that it hopes to introduce are based on the interconnectedness of economic development, democratization (human rights), and strong international organizations (international law). In academia this is referred to as the neo-Kantian triangle. By whatever name, it would seem consonant with U.S. national interests.”

Sutterlin’s career includes many diplomatic posts for the State Department as well as the directorship of the Executive Office of the Secretary General of the United Nations. He has authored several books on the experience of the United Nations, including its efforts in Iraq. He also co-authored The United Nations in Iraq: Defanging the Viper, a book about the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. A member of the UHN Secretariat for 13 years, Sutterlin has also held diplomatic posts in Washington, Germany, and Japan.

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Can We Stop Genocide?

dnorris10 February 7th, 2006

Stephanie Nyombayire and Bec Hamilton, co-founders of The Genocide Intervention Network (GI-Net - formerly the Genocide Intervention Fund), will address the question, “Can We Stop Genocide, and If So, How?” at the next Great Decisions lecture on Tuesday, Feb. 7, at The College of Wooster. The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will be held in Gault Recital Hall of Scheide Music Center (525 E. University St.), beginning at 7:30 p.m.

Nyombayire, a Rwandan student at Swarthmore College, helped to establish GI-Net to raise money for Sudanese refugees. She was chosen from hundreds of applicants nationwide to be one of three students who traveled to the Sudan-Chad border to witness the crisis there firsthand as a “Sudan Correspondent” for MTVUniversity. A Rwandan native, Nyombayire was living in the Congo during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda that took the lives of 800,000, but she experienced the horror of the massacre firsthand when she returned home as an 8 year-old to find that it had taken the lives of family and friends. As a result, Nyombayire, whose academic interests include child psychology and international law, has committed herself to fighting these mass killings through GI-Net, which has raised $200,000 and hopes to reach the $1 million mark.

Hamilton, a joint-degree student at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and Harvard Law School, is also a co-founder of the Darfur Action Group, which mobilizes students to actively condemn the Sudanese genocide and demand that the United States government do the same. The group coordinated a weeklong “Not on our Watch” campaign, and was involved in Harvard University’s decision to divest from companies supporting the Sudanese government. Hamilton has successfully worked to get important legislation passed by Parliament in New Zealand, and in 2005, she worked for the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Before attending law school, she worked in the Sudan, where she executed a plan to help thousands of internally displaced persons return to their homes. A graduate of the University of Sydney, Hamilton is the managing editor of the Harvard Human Rights Journal and a student finalist for the Gary Bellow Public Service Award.

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