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Alumni and Friends: La Follette Notes: Spring 2008
Faculty News
Dennis Dresang served on the Wisconsin Judicial Campaign Integrity Committee to help keep an eye on the spring race for Wisconsin Supreme Court. The State Bar of Wisconsin established the group as an independent monitor of judicial elections.
A study released by the National Research Council in February finds that radioactive cesium chloride in devices used by hospitals, blood banks and universities poses a risk to society. If the radiation sources are stolen, they could be used to construct a so-called dirty bomb. The study recommends policies that would result in cesium chloride irradiators being gradually replaced by X-ray devices. Dave Weimer served on the committee that prepared the study.
New reports on the Milwaukee school voucher program provide baseline data comparing private school students who receive vouchers to students in the Milwaukee Public Schools. John Witte and fellow researchers reported preliminary findings in a five-year study of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program at a Madison news conference in February.
Donald Moynihan has won the Dimock Award from Public Administration Review for best lead article of 2007. He co-authored the article, “The Role of Organizations in Fostering Public Service Motivation,” with Sanjay K. Pandey. In January, Moynihan talked to government officials and academics in Singapore about the use of networks in crisis response, drawing on his 2007 report to the IBM Center for the Business of Government, “From Forest Fires to Hurricane Katrina: Case Studies of Incident Command Systems.”
Renewable energy technology needs more public and private investment Gregory Nemet tells Nature and the Chronicle of Higher Education. Both publications
featured his research showing the decline of research and development by the energy industry and the U.S. government. This lack of investment will make abandoning fossil fuels difficult, he notes.
Bob Haveman and Barbara Wolfe again were visiting professors at Australian National University, where they conducted research and engaged with faculty and students. Each presented research and attended conferences. Rumor has it they also took in some of the Australian Open and checked out a few South Australian wines.
The Midwest Political Science Association is honoring Mark Copelovitch and Susan Yackee in April. Copelovitch and David Andrew Singer will receive the Kellogg/Notre Dame Award for the best paper in comparative politics for 2007, “Financial Regulation, Monetary Policy, and Inflation in the Industrialized World.” Yackee will receive the Best Paper by an Emerging Scholar Award for her 2007 paper written with Jason Yackee “Is Agency Rulemaking ‘Ossified’? Testing Congressional, Presidential, and Judicial Procedural Constraints from 1983 to 2006.”
As worries about the economy grow, so do demands from news outlets for Menzie Chinn to share his expertise about the value of the dollar against other currencies, the U.S. economy and the effects of the federal tax rebate. In January, he, Charles Engel and Donald Nichols met with Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Charles Evans for a free exchange among policymakers and economists about the economy. Chinn will present work this spring on exchange rates at an International Monetary Fund conference and on the renminbi’s value at Goethe University in Frankfurt. In May, he and Engel will convene two conferences on the global economy.
Pamela Herd and co-author Madonna Harrington Meyer are getting good play
on op-ed pages around the country as they highlight economic and health disparities women encounter in old age. They draw on their new book, Market Friendly or Family Friendly? The State and Gender Inequality in Old Age, published in fall 2007.