Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Vietnam War Memorial And The Gulf War, Paul L. Atwood

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article discusses the debate over the "meaning" of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C., relating it to the revision of the "Vietnam syndrome" as it has been played out in recent U.S. armed interventions overseas. Considerable political struggle occurred during the design phase of the memorial over which values the monument should enshrine. Since its construction the memorial has continued to be a focus for controversy about the future direction of U.S. foreign policy and has functioned as a magnet for continuing historical and political attempts to sort out the "lessons" of the second Indochina war. This debate …

Beyond The Party-Group Continuum: Massachusetts Interest Groups In The 1980s, John C. Berg

New England Journal of Public Policy

Studies in the 1960s determined that Massachusetts had strong parties and weak interest groups. In the 1970s and 1980s, as the Republican Party shrank, party competition declined, conflict with the Democratic Party grew, and interest groups gained more importance — and probably will remain important despite the Republican gains of 1990. However, group conflict and citizen mobilization, including increased use of the initiative and referendum, create a situation of interest-centered conflict rather than interest-group dominance as traditionally conceived. This article, based on a 1987 survey of state legislators and legislative aides, plus a summary of recent Massachusetts political history, assesses …

Searching For A Umass President: Transitions And Leaderships, 1970-1991, Richard A. Hogarty

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article traces the history of the five presidential successions that have taken place at the University of Massachusetts since 1970. No manual or campus report will reveal the one best way to conduct a presidential search. How to do so is not easy to prescribe. Suitably fleshed out, the events surrounding these five searches tell us a great deal about what works and what doesn't. It is one thing to offer case illustrations of past events, another to say how they might be put to use by other people in another era with quite different situations and concerns. In …

Defense Cuts: What Might Connecticut Expect On The Manufacturing Employment Front?, Bruce D. Wundt

New England Journal of Public Policy

Connecticut has enjoyed considerable economic prosperity as a result of its reliance on the defense industry. However, as a consequence of reductions in federal spending on defense, this favorable trend of many years is reversing, unfortunately, while the region is also experiencing a general economic slowdown. Many Connecticut industries must prepare for a new era of reducing their dependence on defense contracts and diversify into new markets and products. State policymakers can help during these uncertain times by encouraging private and public retraining of labor resources and the expansion of industries that will promote economic stability.

Representative Men, Shaun O'Connell

New England Journal of Public Policy

"Representativeness" is the theme of Shaun O'Connell's essay, "Representative Men." Reviewing six books, one about an actual man and five about fictional men, O'Connell sees them as attempts to define "representative men" of the 1980s, "an era," he observes, "when the worst were full of passionate intensities, particularly among men." Each antiheroic man in these books, he concludes, was "selfish, domineering, dangerous to women, and deceitful, yet each man was also committed to a system of values and ideas that made him an interesting case history — values which, in some instances, redeemed his failings."

As usual, O'Connell, in his …

Crime, Drugs, And Race, Wornie L. Reed

Trotter Review

The crime and criminal record statistics of black Americans are frightening; and they keep getting worse. These figures, of course, give us pause. Yet, it must be kept in mind that none of these figures demonstrates that blacks as a race are more prone to crime. Rather, the figures show that the average black person in the United States is more likely than the average white person to be so situated in the social structure that he or she is more likely to be involved in crime, with an even higher likelihood of being arrested, convicted, and imprisoned.

African-Americans And The Administration Of Justice, E. Yvonne Moss, Roy Austin, Nolan Jones, Barry A. Krisberg, Hubert G. Locke, Michael L. Radelet, Susan Welch

Trotter Review

The status of African Americans in relationship to the administration of justice has improved since the 1940s. Significantly, however, researchers continue to find racial discrimination and racial disadvantage operating in various aspects of the criminal justice process in numerous jurisdictions. Such findings are unacceptable in a society that claims to honor equal justice under law.

This article is reprinted from Summary, Volume 1 of the Assessment of the Status of African-Americans series, published in 1990 by the William Monroe Trotter Institute, University of Massachusetts at Boston, and edited by Wornie L. Reed. Materials included in the article were adapted …

Trends In Homicide Among African-Americans, Wornie L. Reed

Trotter Review

Homicide is a particularly significant phenomenon for African Americans because it is the leading cause of death for young black men and women. Blacks, who make up some 12% of the population in the country, account for 44% of all murder victims. Thus, reducing homicide deaths among American population groups, particularly among young black males, is a growing public concern. The term homicide refers to any killing of one person by another. In this chapter the phenomenon and the changing trends of homicide among African Americans over the past 30 to 40 years will be examined.

Blacks In Bridge, Wornie L. Reed

Trotter Review

Two events in the spring of 1991 brought to mind the long battle to integrate the American Contract Bridge League (ACBL), which barely beat out the Boston Red Sox in integrating its membership. One was the closing of the famous Cavendish Bridge Club in New York City; the other was a bridge tournament that combined the efforts of ACBL and ABA (American Bridge Association) clubs in the Washington, D.C. area. The ABA is the national association of black bridge players. Both events appear to have been precipitated by a decline in the number of bridge players as the baby boomer …

Sports Notes, Wornie L. Reed

Trotter Review

In the Winter/Spring 1991 issue of the Trotter Institute Review I reported that a black dentist from Boston, Dr. George F. Grant, invented and patented the golf tee in 1899. However, in the May 1991 issue of Golf Digest, a white man, Dr. William Lowell of New Jersey, another dentist, is credited with having invented the golf tee. Having read in a number of reputable publications that Dr. Grant had invented the golf tee, I was interested in finding out how a second man could have been credited so readily with the development of the tee. So I contacted …

Editor's Note, Padraig O'Malley

New England Journal of Public Policy

This issue of the New England Journal of Public Policy is an eclectic mix. Its range and diversity, however, illuminate one of the less considered aspects of public policy: the fact that policy itself, despite the efforts of policy theorists, and on occasion policymakers and practitioners, to invest it with the trappings of rational, scientific method, rarely if ever is defined in politically or culturally neutral terms. The pretense that this is not so suggests that there exists some set of objective criteria that are impervious to either political or cultural dictates. In reality, of course, nothing could be further …

The Impact Of The State Constitutional Convention Of 1917 On State Aid To Higher Education In Massachusetts, John P. Whittaker

New England Journal of Public Policy

The Massachusetts State Constitutional Convention of 1917 marked a turning point in the development of higher education in the state. An amendment adopted at the convention put an end to a long tradition of direct state appropriations to support the development of private colleges and to proposals for cooperative efforts between various state agencies and private institutions. After that time, only state institutions would receive state support. This decision resulted from an attempt to resolve an intense debate over the use of public funding for sectarian and other private institutions, which reflected the intense religious and class conflict inherent in …

Tax To Grind: Unequal Personal Income Taxation Of Massachusetts Single-Parent Families And Options For Reform, Randy Albelda

New England Journal of Public Policy

While Massachusetts households headed by single parents have, on average, less income than other types of families, they are subject to the same effective income tax rate as the population as a whole. Consequently, such head-of-household families are victims of inequitable tax treatment in two ways. First, their current personal exemptions result in a higher tax burden on these families than on families of the same size and income who file joint income tax returns. Second, head-of-household families, defined as single filers, must apply a lower no-tax threshold than joint filers, even though the former are also composed of two …

Touched By Fire: Readings In Time Of War, Shaun O'Connell

New England Journal of Public Policy

In "Touched by Fire: Readings in Times of War," Shaun O'Connell draws us into the eerie atmosphere that pulled this country into itself in the late fall and early winter, when thoughts of war provoked hard questions and when, for a time, doubt became the stuff of eloquence.

The works discussed in this article include: Pledging Allegiance: The Last Campaign of the Cold War, by Sidney Blumenthal; Millie's Book, as dictated to Barbara Bush; An American Life, by Ronald Reagan; The Civil War: An Illustrated History, by Geoffrey C. Ward with Ric Burns and Ken Burns; …

Editor's Note, Padraig O'Malley

New England Journal of Public Policy

This issue of the New England Journal of Public Policy was conceived during the hot, slow days of early August when Saddam Hussein's marauding armies swallowed Kuwait. Contributors made revisions to their manuscripts while President George Bush committed the United States to protecting Saudi Arabia's oligarchy (read "oil for the West"), requiring a military buildup in the harsh sands that was larger than anything of its kind since World War II. The admen in the Pentagon came up with the catchy little logo Desert Shield. Repeated calls by the coalition of nations, led by the United States, for Saddam Hussein's …

Public Benefit And Private Interest: Chronicles Of The Hyde Park Paper Mill, Jeffrey E. Lindenthal

New England Journal of Public Policy

Until it was mothballed and put up for sale in December 1987, a small paper mill in Hyde Park, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Boston 's city limits, was the oldest continuously operating paper mill in the United States. This particular plant closing occurred at a time manufacturing employment in the state had fallen off precipitously. It also coincided with an awareness among some policymakers that recycling programs were urgently needed to combat a garbage glut, in Massachusetts and states across the nation, attributable to an increasingly wasteful society and dwindling landfill capacity. Efforts to reopen the Hyde Park …

Social Investment In Massachusetts Public Higher Education: A Comparative Analysis, Clyde W. Barrow

New England Journal of Public Policy

State expenditures on public higher education are increasingly viewed as a social investment that is necessary to sustain economic growth in a postindustrial economy. However, an analysis of comparative data indicates that state support for such education was below national averages during the 1980s and, when compared to its major competitor states, Massachusetts ranks poorly in support for these institutions. This article concludes that unless state support is increased over the next decade, Massachusetts will risk losing its competitive economic position, while educational administrators will be forced to choose between access or quality in public higher education.

Economic Prescriptions For Black Americans, Jeremiah P. Cotton

Trotter Review

The following is a policy statement issued October 12, 1989, by the "Study Group on Employment, Income, and Occupations" of the Assessment of the Status of African-Americans project conducted by the William Monroe Trotter Institute. The full report of the study group is published in an article entitled "Race and Inequality in the Managerial Age," which appears in Social, Political, and Economic Issues in Black America.

One of the major conclusions of this report on the relative economic status of blacks in the United States is that a substantial and persisting gap exists between the general circumstances of blacks …

African Americans And The Future Of The U.S. Economy, Lou Ferleger, Jay R. Mandle

Trotter Review

For the first time in the country's history, the level of skills and education of the African-American labor force is a critical determinant of the potential for growth of the economy itself. The integration of black labor into the economy now means that the development of one is dependent upon the development of the other. To investigate this relationship we first examine the recent performance of the economy and the consequences of that performance for the black standard of living, and then the role the African-American labor force can play in overcoming the economic deficiencies that have plagued the economy.

Black Underrepresentation In Science And Technology, Robert C. Johnson

Trotter Review

The United States is experiencing a crisis in the training of scientific and technical personnel. A recent report from the National Science Foundation (NSF) indicates that the number of U.S. citizens earning science and engineering doctorates has decreased nearly 5% since 1980. The National Research Council's study of the adequacy of research support for the mathematical sciences in the United States reveals that not only has the production of Ph.D.s in mathematics declined since 1969-70, but the percentage of U.S. citizens receiving those degrees fell during the last decade from 78% of all mathematics Ph.D.s to only 61% of all …

The School Choice Issue: Remarks Made At The U.S. Department Of Education's Regional Strategy Meeting On Choice In Education, Phyllis Mcclure

Trotter Review

The term choice as it is used by the current administration with regard to education is a cosmetic, simplistic response to the failure of American schools. Choice has become a catch-all term for a whole variety of programs, plans, and theories. We should not let this meeting or the Department of Education delude us into believing that parental choice holds the promise for poor and minority children. The term is being used to describe not only what is happening in District 4 [public school district in New York City], but a plethora of ideas based on the free market. I …

Blacks In Golf, Wornie L. Reed

Trotter Review

From 1961 until the mid-1980s a weekend ritual was repeated by many African Americans who follow golf. For these individuals, each weekend morning included a peek at the standings of the weekly Professional Golf Association (PGA) tournament printed in the newspaper to see how the black golfers were doing and whether any one of them was the tournament leader or was close enough to the lead to win the tournament. As the 1980s came to an end anyone still practicing the old ritual was doing so in vain. No blacks were winning tournaments on the regular PGA Tour, nor were …