The Future of Children policy journal has been awarded a grant by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The award of nearly $900,000 will support the production, dissemination, and outreach activities of four journal issues dealing with disadvantaged youth. The journals will contribute to the knowledge base of the Post Secondary Education Plus Initiative recently launched by the Gates Foundation. Each volume will examine an issue that affects youth ages 16­–26 as they try to improve their life circumstances, as well as those of their children. The topics proposed are “Children in Fragile Families;” “Children and Youth in Immigrant Families;” “Work and Family Balance;” and “Post-Secondary Education.” The governing principle of all the volumes will be to identify research and policies that show promise in helping disadvantaged youth break the cycle of poverty and climb the education, employment, and income ladders. 

The Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies (CACPS) sponsored a day-long workshop on “Research on Orchestras” on April 11, at the Mountain Lakes House in Princeton. With support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, CACPS convened over 25 scholars, orchestra managers, grant makers, policymakers, musicians, and critics to design an agenda for social-science research on orchestras. The symposium was followed by a two-week online discussion where participants commented on a draft of findings from the meeting. CACPS will publicize the results of the meeting and the discussion in a report posted on the Center’s website, and also will share it with other organizations that promote research in the orchestra field.

The Center for the Study of Democratic Politics (CSDP) announced five visiting scholars will be in residence for 2008–2009. While pursuing their own research projects, they will participate in courses and colloquia, and contribute to the intellectual life of the Center, the Woodrow Wilson School, and the Department of Politics. Jeffrey E. Cohen is a professor of political science at Fordham University. His major teaching and research interests focus on American political institutions and public policy, especially the presidency, mass media, and economic policy. Carrie Konold is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the University of Michigan, and expects to complete her degree this fall. Her dissertation research examines the character, extent, and theoretical implications of challenges to secularism in democratizing Muslim countries. Beth L. Leech is an associate professor of political science at Rutgers University. Her primary research interests involve the roles of interest groups, social movements, and the mass media in the making of public policy. Leslie J. McCall is an associate professor of sociology at Northwestern University. Her interests include social inequality, economic and political sociology, and social theory. Milan Svolik is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research interests are in comparative and international politics, particularly the political economy of institutions, and formal political theory and statistical methodology. Additional biographical information may be found online.

This fall, CSDP and the Brookings Institution will be co-sponsoring a series of five panel discussions on the 2008 election. These biweekly events, to be held in Washington, will feature the School’s Larry Bartels, Thomas Mann of Brookings, and a rotating cast of leading academic analysts and political reporters. The panels are intended to promote public understanding of the American electoral process by exposing journalists and other members of the Washington community to scholarly perspectives and evidence on key aspects of campaigns and elections, including: political parties and partisanship (September 12); the president, the economy, and war (September 26); candidates, issues, and ideology (October 17); advertising, mobilization, and persuasion (October 31); and elections, mandates, and governance (November 14).

Through the Grand Challenges Initiative on global health and infectious disease, the Center for Health and Wellbeing (CHW) is supporting 17 undergraduates and 2 graduate students participating in faculty-led and/or independent summer projects pertaining to infectious disease. These students are collecting and analyzing data in South Africa, Germany, Mexico, Nigeria, Brazil, Ghana, New York City, Washington, D.C., and Princeton. Under the guidance of Princeton faculty and post-doctoral research associates, the students are learning new strategies to improve malaria and tuberculosis treatment and detection methodologies; broadening their understanding of the interplay between policy and politics on infectious disease in various countries; investigating the roots of drug resistance; and reducing the risk of water-borne infectious disease through new technological introductions.

The Program in Law and Public Affairs (LAPA) organized a busy spring semester that included hosting both of its named lectures and its annual Continuing Legal Education Program for alumni attending reunions. In March, Judge Leonie M. Brinkema, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, delivered LAPA’s John Marshall Harlan ’20 Lecture in Constitutional Adjudication. As the only federal court judge to preside over a trial of a 9/11 conspirator, Judge Brinkema’s address demonstrated the wisdom, insight, and respect for the rule of law that won her universal praise for her handling of the case of U.S. v. Moussaoui. Legal Scholar Cass R. Sunstein, the Karl N. Llewellyn Distinguished Service Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Chicago Law School, drew a packed auditorium for the fourth annual Donald S. Bernstein ’75 Lecture in April. Based upon his examination of more than 30,000 judicial votes, Sunstein’s talk on “Political Judging” asked whether judges vote based on political party affiliation and showed how political views affect outcomes of cases. In late May, LAPA’s eighth annual Continuing Legal Education Program on Law and Religion drew a record attendance. Provost and former LAPA director Christopher Eisgruber ’83 delivered the opening lecture and chaired an expert panel examining recent Supreme Court jurisprudence in the field. The day-long event culminated with a high-profile debate between Princeton’s McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence Robert George and LAPA Fellow and Queen’s Counsel, London and Scotland, Aidan O’Neill. They addressed the question of what religion requires of public officials, with particular reference to the current Catholic majority on the United States Supreme Court.

LAPA’s increasing visibility among legal scholars worldwide was validated by its receipt of over 100 fellowship applications from nearly a dozen different countries on five continents. Of LAPA’s six 2008–2009 fellows, three will come from abroad including Christopher Beauchamp (U.K.); Christina Murray (University of Cape Town, South Africa), and Ingolf Pernice (Humboldt-Universität of Berlin). Completing the fellows cohort are law professors Mark Brandon (Vanderbilt); Malcolm Feeley (U.C. Berkeley); and Noah Zatz (UCLA). On the student front, LAPA hosted several speakers in its new program for M.P.P./M.P.A. candidates entitled “Law in the Public Interest: Not Just for Lawyers,” including an end-of-the-year lunch with Nick Grono MPP ’03, now deputy president of the International Crisis Group. After a year revitalizing the LAPA Undergraduate Associates Program into an active group of nearly 50 students, student leaders Philip Levitz WWS ‘08 and Pauline Yeung WWS ’08 passed the mantle to new leaders, with plans for a variety of programs and a law-related blog.

In April, the Policy Research Institute for the Region (PRIOR) hosted “Reflecting on Improved Literacy: An Invitational Exchange,” a roundtable session aimed at assessing Intensive Early Literacy (IEL) in New Jersey. Spearheaded by Woodrow Wilson School Lecturer Gordon MacInnes, the gathering opened with an overview of the state’s progress with respect to IEL and continued with presentations by leaders from the City of Orange, Union City, and the Passaic School District on their respective strategies and achievements in the area of literacy. Representatives from select school districts, staff from the New Jersey Department of Education, Princeton University faculty, and various practitioners and consultants exchanged ideas and considered potential next steps, such as the formation of a permanent working group. On April 18, PRIOR also joined with the University’s Department of Public Safety and the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators (IACLEA) to host “Campus Safety in Focus: Advances and Ongoing Challenges One Year Later,” as a follow-up to the increased awareness of violence on college campuses one year after the incident at Virginia Tech. The day-long program saw the release of IACLEA’s Blueprint for Safer Campuses, a talk by Princeton University’s Katherine S. Newman, and presentations by nationally recognized experts on model policies in threat assessment, the growing complexities in liability analysis, and the broader sociological phenomena behind incidents. In addition, public safety professionals from Rutgers University, St. John’s University, and the University of Pennsylvania contributed their perspectives on the state of campus safety in the region.

PRIOR and Princeton University’s molecular biology department have launched a three-part series on the health enterprise in New Jersey. The inaugural session occurred May 8, when Dr. William F. Owen, Jr., president of the University of Medicine and Dentistry (UMDNJ), offered an overview of healthcare in the state and his vision of the public medical university.

The Research Program in Political Economy (RPPE) was the sponsor of the Princeton Conference on Dynamic Political Economy held on April 11 and 12. The conference was attended by participants from 16 universities and focused on current research on topics in the political economy of growth, redistribution, public expenditure and debt, and the dynamics of political power.

RPPE, the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance (NCGG), and the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies co-sponsored the spring meeting of the working group on Political Institutions and Economic Policy on May 10 at Princeton University. Conference sessions dealt with the political economy of development, the origins of voting laws, and redistributive taxation.

The Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) has awarded a “Circle of Excellence” Silver Medal to the School’s UChannel project, for “creative use of technology and new media.” CASE judges commended UChannel for demonstrating “a really good understanding of how to apply the ‘new’ technologies to make content more valuable.” UChannel is a constantly updated archive of audio and video recordings of academic public affairs lectures from a consortium of universities led by the Wilson School. In May 2008—less than three years after its inception—UChannel registered two million hits from all over the world, and more than 150,000 downloads of full-length audio and video recordings. “It’s encouraging to know that there is a loyal and growing audience of people looking for thoughtful, uninterrupted presentations on the major issues of the day,” said UChannel Executive Director Donna Liu.