Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

North American Business Strategies Towards Climate Change, Charles Jones, David Levy

Management and Marketing Faculty Publication Series

Business has become a key part of the fabric of global environmental governance, considered here as the network which orders and regulates economic activity and its impacts. We argue that businesses generally are willing to undertake limited measures consistent with a fragmented and weak policy regime. Further, the actions of businesses act to create, shape and preserve that compromised regime. We examine three types of indicators of business responses in North America: ratings by external organizations, commitments regarding emissions, and joint political action. We find business response to be highly ambiguous, with energetic efforts yielding few results.

Data Note: Disability And Occupation, Frank A. Smith, David Clark

Data Note Series, Institute for Community Inclusion

It is well-documented that people with disabilities have a significantly lower rate of employment than people without disabilities (36% versus 74% according to the 2006 American Community Survey (ACS). Less is known about the types of work they do. Using the occupational classification system within the ACS, researchers explored the prevalence of people with disabilities within occupational groupings and discuss its relationship to occupational growth. Future analysis will address variation across disability groups.

Women Of Talent: Gender And Government Appointments In Massachusetts, 2002–2007, Carol Hardy-Fanta, Kacie Kelly

Publications from the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy

Despite the high educational and occupational attainment—and considerable talent—of women in Massachusetts, the state ranks just 22nd in the nation on women's overall share of top executive, legislative, and judicial posts, compared to their share of the population. The goals of this study were to (1) calculate the percentage of women holding senior-level positions in state government at these four points in time; (2) analyze the distribution of appointments by type of position and executive office; (3) provide possible explanations for the status of women’s representation in these positions; and (4) offer recommendations that will serve to promote the appointment …

Brazilians In The U.S. And Massachusetts: A Demographic And Economic Profile, Alvaro Lima, Carlos Eduardo Siqueira

Gastón Institute Publications

Brazil has long seen itself as a destination for immigrants from across the globe, welcoming the likes of Portuguese, Spanish, German, Russian, Polish, Czech, Japanese, and many other nationalities throughout the twentieth century. Migration out of Brazil is a relatively new phenomenon. It was catalyzed in part by the military coup of 1964, when thousands of Brazilians went into exile (though many of them returned following the amnesty of 1979). Over the last few decades, the search for better economic opportunities has led more and more Brazilians to leave their homeland. Five of Brazils’ twenty-six states – Minas Gerais, Espírito …

The First Two Years Of Housing First In Quincy, Massachusetts: "This Place Gives Me Peace, Happiness, And Hope", Tatjana Meschede

Center for Social Policy Publications

Housing First is a housing and support services program that attempts to move the most disabled homeless people directly to housing prior to treatment, using housing as the transforming element to support participation in treatment. This approach does not require sobriety or participation in long-term treatment programs unlike the traditional continuum of care approach. Promising results have been demonstrated in a number of projects using this model (Tsemberis & Eisenberg, 2000).

For the past ten years, Father Bill’s Place (FBP), a homeless shelter and housing program in Quincy, Massachusetts, has moved steadily towards providing permanent housing with supportive services, rather …

Bridging The Gaps: A Picture Of How Work Supports Work In Ten States, Randy Albelda, Heather Boushey

Center for Social Policy Publications

In the United States, it is generally assumed that getting a job is enough to make ends meet. But, in today’s labor market, where nearly a quarter of jobs pay low wages and offer no benefits, this couldn’t be further from the truth for millions of workers and their families. Work supports—programs to assist working families to access basics, such as health care, child care, food, and housing—are supposed to fill in the gaps for families, helping them to afford a safe and decent standard of living. The Bridging the Gaps (BTG) project finds that work supports work for the …

Developing The Whole Child: An Evaluation Of The Latino After‐School Initiative (Lasi), Virginia Diez

Gastón Institute Publications

This report presents findings from an evaluation of the Latino After-School Initiative (LASI), an umbrella organization that provides funding, educational guidelines, staff development, and networking opportunities to after-school programs in the Greater Boston area. LASI funds seven Latino-led after-school programs servicing children ages 7-14. The programs are located in Lynn, Cambridge, Roxbury, Jamaica Plain, and Chelsea. LASI was established in 2001 by the United Way of Massachusetts Bay as a five-year demonstration project to improve academic achievement—as measured by MCAS scores and high school retention rates—among Latino children.

Crime In The African-American Neighborhood, Alix Cantave Ph.D.

William Monroe Trotter Institute Publications

On March 28, 2007, the William Monroe Trotter Institute held a roundtable on crime in predominantly black neighborhoods. More than fifty individuals who represented a broad array of perspectives and experiences took part in the roundtable. Participants included religious leaders, elected officials, educators, academics, law enforcement officials, social services providers, youth workers and youths, and community activists. Participants were eager to examine, discuss, and contribute to the understanding of: What accounts for the high rate of violent crime in Boston’s predominantly black neighborhoods? Is there adequate parent, youth, adult, and institutional accountability? Are there sufficient resources allocated to crime prevention …

Bridging The Gaps Between Earnings And Basic Needs In Massachusetts: Executive Summary And Final Report, Randy Albelda, Jennifer Shea

Center for Social Policy Publications

In the United States, it is generally assumed that holding a steady job is enough to make ends meet. But, in today’s labor market, where nearly a quarter of jobs pay low wages and offer no benefits, this couldn’t be further from the truth for millions of workers and their families. Most workers do not make ends meet on their wages alone. Upper- and moderate-wage workers are not “selfsufficient” as most receive on-the-job benefits, such as employer-provided health insurance or paid sick days, and are eligible for unemployment or disability insurance if they need it. Workers in low-wage jobs find …

Black Expressive Art, Resistant Cultural Politics, And The [Re] Performance Of Patriotism, Deborah Elizabeth Whaley

Trotter Review

During World War I, the Boston editor William Monroe Trotter described black American patriotism as a cautious endeavor and America's willingness to participate in the World War while it turned its back on domestic issues as misguided. In an era when freedom bypassed most black women and men within the nation-state of America and in an era of mass lynching in the American South, he proclaimed that black Americans and the U.S. government might refocus their efforts on making the world safer for "Negroes."

Like William Monroe Trotter, the rap group Public Enemy's rap odyssey "Welcome to the Terrordome," from …

Tapping The Wisdom Of Our Ancestors: An Attempt To Recast Vodou And Morality Through The Voice Of Mama Lola And Karen Mccarthy Brown, Claudine Michel

Trotter Review

In this essay, I demonstrate that morality is culture-specific and contextual. To illustrate this point, I focus on Vodou, a religion that has been almost entirely misrepresented in the West, foremost because of its African origins, and that is perceived as having no legitimate basis for morality. I attempt to interpret morality in Vodou by presenting a model of ethics construction based on the true meaning of the religion rather than on the exotica of its myths and ritualizing. My analysis is based on the fact that Haitians seem to have turned to their ancestral religion and to their African …

A Historical Overview Of Poverty Among Blacks In Boston, 1950-1990, Robert C. Hayden

Trotter Review

Like most nineteenth-century residents of Boston, blacks worked hard to maintain their homes and families. Even before the Civil War, both enslaved and free blacks in "freedom's birthplace" worked long and arduous hours. Those who migrated to Boston from the South in the 1800s had come to secure higher wages, mobility, and opportunity for themselves and their families. Boston's black population grew from 2,000 in 1850 to 8,125 in 1890, and to 11,591 by 1900. In 1900, 39 percent of black Bostonians were northern-born (New England, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania), and 53 percent were southern-born.

Residential segregation for …

Commentary, Clyde Taylor

Trotter Review

There's some buzz about Bill O'Reilly's racially ignorant remarks about Sylvia's Restaurant in Harlem. But the darling of left-liberal media jokesters, Jon Stewart, had a good time on his Friday, September 21 show, first, at the expense of President Bush, and then at the expense of Nelson Mandela. Blogs are cheerleading the way Stewart caught Bush in another dumb statement — that Nelson Mandela is dead. The only comments I find on the web are kudos for Stewart's bashing of Bush. No mention of Stewart animalizing Mandela with sounds that echo the mumbo-jumbo sneer at nonwhite speech, or of his …

Pastor Brunson's Shofar, Richard Tenorio

Trotter Review

A short story by Richard Tenorio of sibling love and sacrificed ambition, which is set in Roxbury, traditionally the twentieth-century home territory for blacks in Boston. Today, Roxbury is poised on the lip of gentrification, and blacks in Boston are on the move again, seeking home and security and belonging.

Madre Patria (Mother Country): Latino Identity And Rejections Of Blackness, Marta I. Cruz-Janzen

Trotter Review

When I was in third grade, in Puerto Rico, I wanted to be the Virgin Mary for the community Christmas celebration. A teacher promptly informed me that the mother of Christ could not be black. A girl with blonde hair and blue eyes was selected for the role, and I was given the role of a shepherd. In middle school, also in Puerto Rico, I played a house servant for a school play. Only children of black heritage played the slaves and servants. A white student with a painted face portrayed the only significant black character. All the other characters …

Massworks: Quality Employment Services: Where Research And Practice Meet, Rick Kugler, Cindy Thomas

MassWorks Series, Institute for Community Inclusion

Providing quality employment services to people with disabilities requires a substantial commitment of time, energy, and resources. Given this investment and our obligation to individuals with disabilities, we as providers must deliver the most effective services possible.

Expanding Homeownership Opportunity Ii: The Softsecond Loan Program, 1991-2006, Jim Campen

Gastón Institute Publications

This report provides data on lending by the SoftSecond Loan Program during the most recent three-year period (2004-2006) as well as over the sixteen-year life of the program. The Mortgage Lending Committee of the Massachusetts Community & Banking Council (MCBC) has had a special interest in the SoftSecond program since its inception and has carefully monitored the performance of its loans. The report updates an earlier report prepared for MCBC by the present author in 2004: Expanding Homeownership Opportunity: The SoftSecond Loan Program, 1991-2003. Detailed information about the origins and evolution of the program, and about the details of …

Data Note: National Day And Employment Service Trends In Mr/Dd Agencies, Jean E. Winsor, John Butterworth

Data Note Series, Institute for Community Inclusion

In FY2004, 22% of individuals receiving day supports from state mental retardation or developmental disability (MR/DD) agencies participated in integrated employment while 56.5% of individuals were supported in facility-based settings. While the data demonstrate a continued decrease in the percent of people served in facility-based settings (from 60% in 1999 to 57% in 2004), it also suggests a slight decrease in the percent served in integrated employment (from 25.5% in 1999 to 22% in 2004).

Tools For Inclusion: Self-Determination: A Fundamental Ingredient Of Employment Support, Lora Brugnaro, Jaimie Ciulla Timmons

Tools for Inclusion Series, Institute for Community Inclusion

Persons with disabilities should direct their own job searches, from determining their interests and goals to researching employment opportunities to starting a new job. Doing so increases their sense of empowerment and can contribute to their employment success. Employment professionals have a facilitating role to play in the process. Job seeker self-determination practices should drive employment services' coordination, funding, and implementation.

Looking Back And Looking Ahead: Policy Visions From The New Deal And Great Society, Françoise Carré

Center for Social Policy Publications

On April 10 and 11, 2007, the Center for Social Policy convened a conference exploring policy visions from the New Deal and Great Society and their implications for today’s policy thinking. Titled, "Looking Back and Looking Ahead", this conference took place at the University of Massachusetts Boston Campus Center and the John F. Kennedy Library.

The conference was designed as an opportunity for speakers and participants to reflect on the lessons learned from these two watershed eras of policy innovation and their implications for looking forward. Policy actors and experts participated in three panel discussions on the historical context of …

The Voting Rights Act And The Election Of Nonwhite Officials, Pei-Te Lien, Dianne M. Pinderhughes, Carol Hardy-Fanta, Christine M. Sierra

Publications from the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy

Voting Rights Act (VRA) is one of the most important—if not the most important—public policies developed over the last half century to increase access to the U.S. political system for people of color. The VRA also provides an important context for understanding the ascension of nonwhite groups into the elected leadership of the nation (Browning, Marshall, and Tabb 1984; Davidson and Grofman 1994; Menifield 2001; Mc-Clain and Stewart 2002; Segura and Bowler 2005; Bositis 2006). This essay assesses the present-day significance of the VRA for the political representation of communities of color by examining the implications of majority-minority districts and …

Uncertainty, Technical Change, And Policy Models, Erin Baker, Leon Clarke, Jeffrey Keisler, Ekundayo Shittu

College of Management Working Papers and Reports

Both climate change and technical change are uncertain. In this paper we show the importance of including both uncertainties when modeling for policy analysis. We then develop an approach for incorporating uncertainty of technical change into climate change policy analysis. We define and demonstrate a protocol for bottom-up expert assessments about prospects for technologies. We then describe a method for using such assessments to derive a probability distribution over future abatement curves, and to estimate random return functions for technological investment in different areas. Finally, we show how these analytic results could be used in a variety of energy-economic models …

Institute Brief: Increasing Placement Through Professional Networking, Allison Fleming, Diane Loud

The Institute Brief Series, Institute for Community Inclusion

The national percentage of people of working age with disabilities who are employed continues to hover around 37%, compared with 80% for their peers without disabilities. However, according to the Harris Poll (2004), 67% of people with disabilities who are not currently working would like to be. In the late 1990s, a Presidential Task Force began work on improving the employment rate for adults with disabilities, a national priority that was further supported by the New Freedom Initiative of 2001, creating a bipartisan effort. Despite these initiatives, the rate of employment for people with disabilities has not increased.

Oil. Seeking Peace In The Niger Delta: Oil, Natural Gas, And Other Vital Resources, Darren Kew, David L. Phillips

New England Journal of Public Policy

Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta region has seen little benefit from the billions of dollars earned from oil over the last four decades, prompting a growing but disorganized insurgency across the region. Irresponsible oil companies and government officials have reduced the Niger Delta to one of the most polluted environments on earth. Corrupt local and national politicians, many of whom came to power through rigged elections, have colluded to manipulate ethnic divisions amid poverty to loot the region’s wealth. Consequently, the people of the Niger Delta have no formal political voice in Nigeria’s nascent democratic system, increasing the appeal of militias …

Oil. China And Oil In The Asian Pacific Region: Rising Demand For Oil, Pablo Bustelo

New England Journal of Public Policy

China’s growing demand for oil is significantly changing the international geopolitics of energy, especially in the Asian Pacific region. The recent growth in oil consumption, combined with forecasts of increased oil imports (especially from the Middle East), have led to deep concern among Chinese leaders regarding their country’s energy security. They are responding in a number of different ways. In particular, they are searching for new sources of supply and seeking to control purchases and transport lanes, while boosting national production at any cost. This is already causing tension with the United States and other big oil consumers, such as …

Fueling The Superpowers: Russia As A Player In World Energy, Theresa Sabonis-Helf

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article by Theresa Sabonis-Helf is taken from the proceedings of the EPIIC Symposium at Tufts University, February 2005

Oil. Geopolitics Reborn: Oil, Natural Gas, And Other Vital Resources, Michael T. Klare

New England Journal of Public Policy

Competition over vital resources is a potent source of international friction among nations and within states. The result is the increasing interplay of international and internal struggles and the growing militarization of the global energy resource quest.

Fueling The Superpowers: Potential Hazard For U.S.-China Relations, Travis Tanner

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article by Travis Tanner is taken from the proceedings of the EPIIC Symposium at Tufts University, February 2005

Fueling The Superpowers: What Role For Iran?, Hossein Askari

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article by Hossein Askari is taken from the proceedings of the EPIIC Symposium at Tufts University, February 2005

Editor's Note, Padraig O'Malley

New England Journal of Public Policy

This issue of the New England Journal of Public Policy that deals with issues of climate change, oil, and water and the interconnection of the three with the future of the planet.

Initially our topic was conceived as “Oil & Water” only. We planned to present the proceedings of an Institute for Global Leadership symposium held at Tufts University in 2005. There was then still a debate about global warming, although the Kyoto Treaty was in place. But without the world’s preeminent manufacturer of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the United States (20 percent of the total emissions with 5 percent …