Recent Academy Publications
This report highlights recently issued titles related to Academy
projects, book versions of Dædalus issues, and works scheduled for
release in the near future. When ordering featured publications, please note
that in most cases, shipping and handling charges (which may vary according to
destination) will be added to the prices quoted. Sales tax will usually be
charged to residents of the states in which the publishers are located.
Dædalus
Distinctively American: The Residential Liberal Arts Colleges
(paperback, $29.95), edited by Steven Koblik (Reed College) and Stephen R.
Graubard (Brown University), has been released by Transaction Publishers. This
augmented version of the
Winter 1999 issue of Dædalus examines the American liberal
arts college as an institution, from its role in the lives of students to its
value as a form of education.
Much change is under way in American higher education. New
technologies challenge the teaching practices of yesterday, distance learning
is lauded, and private firms offer to certify the educational credentials that
businesses and others will deem satisfactory. In this new environment,
America's liberal arts colleges propound a quite different set of values. Their
continuing faith in the liberal arts—not as the nineteenth century chose
to define them or as the twentieth century practiced them, but as the
twenty-first century will be obliged to reconsider them—is being tested.
Distinctively American explores the threats faced by liberal
arts colleges, as well as the transformative role—both positive and
negative—that information technology will play in their future development
and survival. In exploring the triumphs and challenges of one segment of the
American higher educational universe, the contributors also address a larger
question: What should this country be teaching its young, the many millions who
now throng its colleges and universities?
To order Distinctively American, call (888) 999-6778 and
press 2. If you're a member of the Academy you can receive a 30 percent
discount—see the printed Bulletin for details.
The Brain (paperback, $29.95), an augmented version of the Spring
1998 issue of Dædalus, edited by Gerald M. Edelman and Jean-Pierre
Changeux, has been published by Transaction. One of the most significant
scientific accomplishments of the past fifty years has also been one of the
least heralded: the tremendous advancement in our understanding of the human
brain. Recent research focuses on how the brain works, as well as how it is
related to what we call the mind. Movement, sight, memory, and consciousness,
as well as human emotions and sentiments, are given new meaning by what we have
learned. The insights gained have not only deepened our understanding of
thought and behavior; they have also shed new light on art, philosophy, and
religion.
In this volume, fourteen experts in the brain sciences review the
current status of their work for the general reader, explaining how certain
features of the brain challenge its popular image as a machine, probing the
functional architecture of the brain, exploring whether intricate neural
systems can be illuminated by theoretical structures, and pondering the complex
and dynamic process of sleep. They elucidate such topics as the neurobiology
and pharmacology of drug action and addiction, the connections between the
functions of art and the functions of the visual brain, and the integral
intimacy among brain, body, and world. Together, their essays illustrate that
we are redrawing our picture of the brain in fundamental ways.
To order The Brain, call (888) 999-6778 and press 2. If
you're a member of the Academy you can receive a 30 percent discount—see
the printed Bulletin for details.
Science in Culture (paperback, $29.95) originally the
Winter 1998 issue of Dædalus), edited by Peter Galison,
Stephen R. Graubard, and Everett Mendelsohn (Transaction Publishers). Where is
science? The contributors to this volume figure it to be most everywhere as
they explore physics, chemistry, and biology—and also Renaissance
inventions, educational policy, and the "imprinting" of children in
antiquity. In the views presented here, science is not an arcane enterprise,
isolated from the world; rather, it is deeply embedded in culture. At the same
time, it is not a mere reflection of an external culture, but part of the many
worlds in which it has been sited. Whether we look at science grounded in
wartime Cambridge, in medieval theories of reproduction, or in the
artistic-scientific explorations of Leonardo, we will come to understand
science more deeply if we can grasp the shifting cultural places in which it
has been rooted.
Committee on International Security Studies
The United States and the
International Criminal Court: National Security and International Law
(hardcover, $65.00; paperback, $24.95), edited by Sarah B. Sewall (Harvard
University) and Carl Kaysen (MIT), has been published by Rowman and
Littlefield. This volume is based on a major CISS study on the subject,
codirected by Ms. Sewall, Mr. Kaysen, and Michael Scharf (New England School of
Law).
A growing international consensus supports the idea of holding
individuals responsible for the most egregious violations of human rights, such
as genocide. This consensus underlies recent efforts to create an International
Criminal Court (ICC). Inside the United States, however, the proposal to
establish the ICC is controversial. President Clinton signed the treaty to
establish the Court, despite what in his view were "significant
flaws." Congressional opponents claim the proposed Court would put
American officials and servicemembers at risk. The ICC will come into being
when sixty states have ratified the treaty.
To examine US concerns about the Court, the CISS
study brought together experts on law, the military, and international
relations. The participants assessed the potential national security risks that
would be associated with a functioning ICC, as well as the potential costs to
US security that could result from opposing the Court's creation. They also
addressed broader concerns: What goals would an international criminal court
advance? Would individual states block action when it was most needed? Would a
court complicate efforts to promote international peace and security?
Former president Jimmy Carter commented, "This comprehensive
book gives citizens and policymakers the practical information they need to
evaluate the International Criminal Court and to understand how American
support will advance human rights and the national interest of the United
States."
To order The United States and the International Criminal Court,
call (800) 462-6420 and press 3.
Belarus at the Crossroads
(paperback, $12.95), edited by Sherman Garnett (James Madison College at
Michigan State University) and Robert Legvold (Columbia University), has been
issued by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The book is the
result of a collaborative effort between the Carnegie Endowment and the
Academy's Committee on International Security Studies.
Although frequently overlooked in the West, Belarus is a country
critical to the development of the post-Soviet states and to Europe as a whole.
Its geographic location and the ambitions of its president make it a major
geopolitical player. However, as Belarus has struggled to establish its own
independent identity, it has turned its back on the political and economic
reforms that have characterized the other states of the region. The desire of
Belarusians to reconstitute a union with the other states of the former Soviet
Union has also increased. These factors have led many Western analysts and
governments to dismiss Belarus as a hopeless backwater.
To address what to date has been a shortsighted and potentially
dangerous neglect of Belarus, the editors of this volume brought together
experts from six countries—Belarus, Russia, the Ukraine, Poland,
Lithuania, and the United States—to explore the place of Belarus in the
evolving European security environment. Despite the differences in their views,
the contributors agree that what is at stake is whether Belarus, a frontline
state bordering NATO, will be a bridge or a barrier to the West.
To order Belarus at the Crossroads, call Carnegie's
distributor, the Brookings Institution Press, at (800) 275-1447 and press 1.
"A Scourge of Small Arms"
by Jeffrey Boutwell (US Pugwash) and Michael T. Klare (Hampshire College)
appeared in the June 2000 issue of Scientific American. The article is
based on the "Light Weapons and Civil Conflict" study conducted by
CISS under the direction of the authors.
The cold-war-era preoccupation with nuclear arms and major weapons
systems deflected attention from the global trade in small arms (pistols,
revolvers, rifles, and carbines) and light weapons (machine guns, small
mortars, and other weapons that can be carried by one or two people). In recent
years, however, many experts have examined why these weapons are so easily
accessible and how they affect the societies now flooded with them. The
disturbing findings are driving a new arms-control movement, led by a loose
coalition of the United Nations, concerned national governments, and
nongovernmental organizations.
The authors outline five basic elements that experts consider essential if
attempts to control small arms are to be effective: an international system of
reporting information on global trafficking in such arms, the adoption of
strict standards for legal export of weapons by major military suppliers, an
effort to dampen the global demand for arms, an initiative to eradicate the
black-market arms trade, and peace agreements that help reintegrate former
combatants into the civilian economy.
"A Scourge of Small Arms" is
available online. To order reprints of "A Scourge of Small Arms,"
call (212) 451-8877 or email sacust@sciam.com.
Midwest Consortium for International Security Studies
"Terrorism and Business," a double issue of the DePaul
Business Law Journal (vol. 12, nos. 1-2, Fall/Spring 1999/2000;
$15.00), contains the proceedings of an October 1999 MCISS meeting on that
topic. The conference was cosponsored by MCISS, DePaul University, the Chicago
Council on Foreign Relations, and several other Chicago groups.
Prior to the conference, the implications of terrorism for business had not
been the focus of any substantial scholarship, and no other symposium or policy
discussion had examined the topic. The assembled group of distinguished
government officials, business leaders, and scholars sought to draw the
attention of the business and legal communities to emerging terrorist threats
that raise numerous concerns for key business sectors. The published
proceedings make clear that the subject of terrorism's implications for
business demands far more attention. Because terrorist activities could inflict
enormous costs, the business community must strengthen its capabilities to
protect itself. Moreover, intensified regulation of commercial and industrial
activity to prevent terrorist access to dangerous items portends increasing
government intrusion into the marketplace, with implications for both economic
vitality and civil liberties.
To order the "Terrorism and Business" issue of the DePaul
Business Law Journal, call (312) 362-6178.
Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs
The Pugwash Occasional Papers have been initiated by the
international Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs to disseminate
innovative analysis and policy prescriptions on controversial issues facing the
global community. The Occasional Papers' wide audience includes policymakers,
the media, nongovernmental organizations, and the research community. The two
issues published during the past year grew out of the activities of the Pugwash
study group on "Intervention, Sovereignty, and International
Security."
The first issue
(vol. 1, no. 1) contains papers from the study group's December 1999
workshop in Venice. Quite purposively, it explores in depth those attitudes and
arguments (mostly Western) in favor of humanitarian intervention, even when
such intervention lacks a formal mandate from the United Nations. At its
initial meeting, the study group focused specifically on what could be called
"first-order issues" regarding intervention: concepts of
international law, the UN Charter, the international politics of intervention,
the tensions between intervention and sovereignty from the perspective of
international law, and the deep divisions separating Western concepts of
intervention from those in Russia, China, and much of the developing world.
The papers in the second issue
(vol. 2, no. 1) were presented at the group's September 2000 meeting in
Como. Although support may be growing in the United States and much of Europe
for a regime obliging the international community to engage in humanitarian
intervention, a large obstacle stands in the way: the dissent of much, maybe
most, of the UN membership, including two of the Security Council's five
permanent members. Their objections must be understood and overcome if a regime
condemning massive inhumanity and possessed of means for addressing it is to be
created. For this reason the papers focus on the views of three major
players—China, India, and Russia—and of states from Africa, a Third
World region particularly prone to problems inviting humanitarian intervention.
The authors also survey the signs that opposition is softening and suggest
areas in which the broader international community might find common ground.
Future issues of the Pugwash Occasional Papers will continue to address topics
in humanitarian intervention and international security but will also cover
such traditional Pugwash areas of concern as nuclear weapons, chemical and
biological weapons, and regional security.
Fellows may direct inquiries about the Pugwash Occasional Papers series to
Anthony Baird at the House of the Academy (617) 576-5024. The Occasional Papers
are also available on the Pugwash website at
www.pugwash.org.
The Pugwash Newsletter is now produced by the Academy office of
the international Pugwash Con-ferences on Science and World Affairs. Under the
direction of George Rathjens, secretary general of Pugwash, and Jeffrey
Boutwell, secretary of US Pugwash, the Cambridge office has overall
responsibility for the planning and implementation of Pugwash workshops,
publications, and activities.
In addition to continuing its longstanding role as a historical record of
Pugwash meetings and activities, the Newsletter (published two times a
year) features selected substantive papers from Pugwash workshops and symposia.
The November
1999 issue provided extensive coverage of the 49th Pugwash Conference,
devoted to "Confronting the Challenges of the 21st Century," which
took place that fall in Rustenburg, South Africa. Participants contributed
reports on the conference's five working groups, whose themes centered on a
nuclear weapon–free world, emerging security threats in Africa and globally,
development, the environment, and international governance. The
June 2000 issue featured a special report by George Rathjens, titled
"Nuclear Weapons Issues and the Pugwash Agenda," based on meetings
convened in order to help determine exactly where Pugwash can marshal its
resources to help the international community reverse a number of serious
recent setbacks in the control and elimination of nuclear weapons.
Fellows may direct inquiries about the Pugwash Newsletter to Anthony
Baird at the House of the Academy (617) 576-5024. The Newsletter is also
available on the organization's website at
www.pugwash.org.
Initiatives for Children—Center for Evaluation
"The Case for Smaller Classes and for Evaluating What Works in
the Schoolroom," an article by Frederick Mosteller (Harvard),
director of IFC's Center for Evaluation, was published in the May/June 1999
issue of Harvard Magazine (vol. 101, no. 5, pp. 34-35). In this piece,
Mr. Mosteller updates his analysis of Tennessee's statewide Project STAR
(Student/Teacher Achievement Ratio), an important four-year study of the
educational effects of class size and teachers' aides in the early grades.
Project STAR clearly demonstrated that smaller classes did bring substantial
improvement in early learning in subjects such as reading and arithmetic.
Following the students further, the researchers found that the positive effects
persisted through grade 7. Mr. Mosteller concludes that more experiments of
comparable quality are needed to guide intelligent, effective policymaking in
education. In the related report "How Does Class Size Relate to Achievement
in Schools?" Mr. Mosteller examines Indiana's Project Prime Time
and the Tennessee projects in the context of questions and concerns that
remain. That report has been published as a chapter of Earning and Learning: How
Schools Matter, edited by Susan E. Mayer and Paul E. Peterson
(Brookings Institution Press and Russell Sage Foundation, 2000).
• "A Rare Design: The Role of Field Trials in Evaluating School
Practices," coauthored by Bill Nave (Technology Education Research
Center), Edward J. Miech (National Academy of Education), and Frederick
Mosteller, appears in Review of Educational Research, edited by George
F. Madaus, Dan Stufflebeam, and Tom Kellaghan (Kluwer Academic Press, 2000).
The authors contend that educators have largely neglected a powerful and
persuasive research design to demonstrate program effectiveness: the
randomized-controlled field trial, widely used in such disciplines as medicine
and public health. They offer several examples of such trials that have yielded
valuable knowledge about school practices and suggest steps that might make
field trials more relevant in education research.
• "Mediators and Moderators in the Evaluation of Programs for Children:
Current Practice and Agenda for Improvement" by Anthony J.
Petrosino (IFC Center for Evaluation) was published in the February 2000 issue
of Evaluation Review (vol. 24, no. 1, pp. 47-72). The paper reports on a
bibliometric analysis of current practice in the analysis of mediating and
moderating variables in treatment studies concerning six areas of childhood
intervention: education, mental health, juvenile justice, medicine, child
protection, and social programs more generally. Finding that researchers in
these areas examine such variables less regularly and effectively than their
counterparts in prevention and health promotion, the author outlines an agenda
for improvement.
To obtain reprints of the IFC pieces, call Kristina Lombardi at
(617) 576-5041 or email klombardi@amacad.org.
Higher Education
The Transition from Paper, edited by R. Stephen Berry
and Anne Moffat, is available on the Academy's website at
www.amacad.org/projects/transition.aspx. This report—the product of
a study carried out under the auspices of the Academy's Midwest
Center—explores possible futures for the collection, dissemination, and
storage of scientific information by electronic media. The world of
communication is going through a transition with far-reaching consequences,
both positive and negative. Motivated by a desire to better understand these
changes and by an awareness that the scientific community may have only a brief
window in which to shape their course, participants in the study envision
possible electronic worlds for the natural sciences, with chemistry serving as
the primary focus of the scenarios. The project was undertaken with the view
that it would serve as a stepping-stone to a successor project concerning the
impact of electronic communication in the social sciences, humanities, and
arts.
Social Transformations
Disaffected Democracies: What's Troubling the Trilateral Countries?
(hardcover, $65.00; paperback, $19.95), edited by Susan J. Pharr and Robert D.
Putnam (both of Harvard University), has been published by Princeton University
Press. This collection of essays is a twenty-fifth-anniversary successor volume
to the provocative 1975 book The Crisis of Democracy, which was
initiated by the Trilateral Commission. Disaffected Democracies is the
final major project of the "Democratic Governance" portion of the
Academy's program in "Social Capital, Democracy, and Public Affairs,"
directed by Mr. Putnam.
It is a notable irony that as democracy replaces other forms of governing
throughout the world, citizens of the most established and prosperous
democracies—the United States, Canada, Western European nations, and
Japan—increasingly report dissatisfaction and frustration with their
governments. In this volume, a group of influential political scientists
examine why this is so.
The authors indicate that citizen disaffection in the trilateral democracies is
not the result of a frayed social fabric, economic insecurity, the end of the
cold war, or public cynicism. Rather, they conclude, the trouble lies with
governments and politics themselves. The sources of the problem include
governments' diminished capacity to act in an interdependent world and a
decline in institutional performance, in combination with new public
expectations and uses of information that have altered the criteria by which
people judge their governments.
Focusing on the last quarter of the twentieth century, the book represents a
much-needed examination of the important and increasingly international
question of public dissatisfaction with democratic governance.
To order Disaffected Democracies, call (800) 777-4726.
Committee on Intellectual Correspondence
Correspondence, the twice-yearly international review
of culture and society, released its sixth issue in Spring/Summer 2000. The
publication was established at the Academy four years ago by Daniel Bell
(Harvard) as a project of the Committee on Intellectual Correspondence—a
joint venture of the Suntory Foundation of Japan, the Wissenschafts-kolleg zu
Berlin, and the Academy. Correspondence is now published under the
auspices of the Council on Foreign Relations and circulated to over seven
thousand academic and public figures in the United States, Europe, and Japan.
From its inception, Correspondence has sought to create a cultural
milieu that reduces the insularity of nations and the increased specialization
of disciplines. Toward that end, each issue focuses on a significant or
neglected topic; past themes have included the digital age, history revisited,
and translation. The Spring/Summer 2000 issue looks at how the Internet is
transforming the character of the press in eight major countries—the
United States, England, France, Italy, Germany, Russia, India, and
Japan—and examines the vicissitudes of language in the global village.
Copies may be obtained upon request from Correspondence, Council on
Foreign Relations, 58 East 68th Street, New York, NY 10021 (email:
cic@cfr.org).
If you encounter any problems in ordering the publications described above,
please call Alexandra Oleson at the House of the Academy (617) 576-5014 or
email aoleson@amacad.org.
Forthcoming Books
The following brief previews describe publications currently
scheduled for release within the coming year.
Dædalus
The American Academic Profession (originally the
Fall 1997 issue of Dædalus), edited by Stephen R. Graubard
(Transaction Publishers). This collection of essays examines our nation's
professoriate in the context of the political, economic, social, and
intellectual forces that have reshaped the American system of higher education,
which became a mass enterprise even before World War I. Contributors address
such topics as how the academic profession is changing, the effects of
technology on higher education, and the place of the American professoriate
within the international academic community. The volume raises the question of
whether a society can know its institutions of higher education when it has
relied on hagiography for so many decades and when recently only arguments
critical of the system have come to the fore. Have we moved too quickly from
unquestioning admiration to uninformed complaint? This book calls Americans to
examine their beliefs and prejudices regarding their educational institutions
at every level.
Public Spheres and Collective Identities (originally the
Summer 1998 issue of Dædalus), edited by Shmuel N.
Eisenstadt, Wolfgang Schluchter, and Björn Wittrock (Transaction Publishers).
This volume offers new scholarly perspectives on the emergence of modern states
in places outside the West—especially in China, Japan, and India—and
suggests a much broader variety of paths toward modernity than classical
interpretations have contemplated. At a time when the acquaintance of the
English-speaking world with the civilizations of Asia is principally of the
modern era, representing that world in earlier centuries is a difficult
task—a task made all the more imperative by the belief of the authors that
a comparative study is essential to an in-depth understanding of societies that
might resemble those of the West in many ways yet ought not simply to be seen
as their clones. A second look at cases we thought we knew well—France and
Spain—hints that even in the West, the "standard model" has been
too narrow.
Committee on International Security Studies
"Land Erosion in the Indian State of Bihar" by
Thomas Homer-Dixon (last in a series of four CISS Occasional Papers of the
project on "Environmental Scarcities, State Capacity, and Civil
Violence," edited by Jeffrey Boutwell and Thomas Homer-Dixon). This paper
analyzes the relationships between land erosion, economic productivity,
migration, and civil violence in one of the largest and poorest states in
India.
"The Significance of Joint Missile Surveillance" by
John Steinbruner (CISS Occasional Paper). The author examines the agreement to
establish in Moscow a US-Russian Joint Data
Exchange Center for sharing ballistic missile surveillance information.
Drawing upon the insights of a group of industry, academic, and governmental
experts who reviewed in detail the proposed missile surveillance center, the
paper recommends ways in which the center might be improved.
The material in this review is taken or adapted from various sources, including
introductory and concluding essays, tables of contents, book covers and dust
jackets, catalog copy and press releases, proposals, and other descriptive
information provided by the featured publications' publishers, editors, and
authors.
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