12.03.08
Posted in Government, Homeland Security, Jacob Canon, Obama, Politics, The Oscar Show, UVa College of Arts & Sciences, University of Virginia, War on Terror, elections at 12:04 pm by Jacob Canon
In today’s show, adapted from an article written by Mary Wood, Director of Communications for the School of Law at the University of Virginia, we discuss UVa Graduate, Janet Napolitano, who was named as the next secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, a Cabinet-level post, by President-elect Barack Obama.
Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, a 1983 graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law, has been nominated as the next secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Dean Paul G. Mahoney said, “Governor Napolitano has dedicated her career to public service, fulfilling an ideal that the University of Virginia Law School holds dear. The nation is fortunate that President-elect Obama has chosen to bring her wide-ranging talents to a vitally important position.”
Napolitano Tapped by Obama for Homeland Security Secretary [5:26m]:
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Chosen by Time magazine in 2005 as one of America’s top five governors, Napolitano recently concluded her term as the first woman and first Arizonan chosen to chair the National Governors Association. Elected governor of Arizona in 2002 and re-elected in 2006, she is the first woman in the nation’s history to serve as U.S. attorney, state attorney general and governor in immediate succession.
In a 2007 interview with UVA Lawyer magazine, Napolitano stressed the importance of bipartisan governance and said neither party has a monopoly on good ideas.
Napolitano said, “It is necessary for us to reach across the aisle to build consensus. In the end, the voters don’t care whether you’re a ‘D’ or an ‘R’ — they want results… What did you do in education, in health care, on job development, to protect the environment? They want to know what you produced besides a fight. Excessive partisanship is troublesome because it’s an artificial limitation on thinking about what’s the best idea. And sometimes the best idea requires a compromise to get any of it done.”
After Napolitano took office, she erased a billion-dollar deficit without raising taxes or cutting funds for public schools. She made education one of the key issues in her administration, and started a voluntary full-day kindergarten program. She has also reformed the state’s Child Protective Services.
Napolitano helped create the Arizona Counter-Terrorism Information Center, a multi-agency intelligence fusion center that tracks and shares critical data. She created a prescription-discount plan for Arizona seniors and her administration expanded the state’s group health insurance plan to include more individuals and small businesses.
Prior to taking elected office, she served for four years as a U.S. attorney for the District of Arizona. Born in New York City and raised in Albuquerque, N.M., Napolitano is a graduate of Santa Clara University. She has lived in Arizona since 1983, when she moved to Phoenix to clerk for a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judge and then practice law.
Napolitano joins several other Law School graduates with high-ranking national security posts. Kip Hawley, a 1980 alumnus, is the director of the Transportation Security Administration. Robert Mueller, a 1973 graduate, is the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigations, and 1989 graduate Patrick Rowan is the assistant attorney general for national security.
Speaking at the Law School’s 2007 commencement, Napolitano challenged graduating students to make sense of the transformative nature of technology, international law and the rule of law.
Napolitano said, “Your job will be to sort out where to alter the law and where to leave it alone. To know the law is to know how to make this world better through its proper application and to practice law properly is to engage in public service of the highest order. Never forget that being an attorney is not just a job, it is a calling — it is a way of life.”
You’ve been listening to the Oscar Show, I’m Jacob Canon. Join us next week when we will look at the Commonwealth’s first ever, Doctor of Nursing Practice Degree. The UVa Nursing School granted the historic first ever achievement, on November 14, 2008.
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10.01.08
Posted in Cognitive Science, Education, Gender Bias, Jacob Canon, Politics, Psychology, Racism, The Oscar Show, UVa College of Arts & Sciences, University of Virginia, elections, ethics, history at 11:04 am by Jacob Canon
In today’s show, we share comments and reflections from the UVa Faculty Roundtable concerning Race and Gender in Politics.
Last Thursday, the Miller Center of Public Affairs hosted the UVa Faculty Round Table on Race and Gender in Politics. Sponsored by the University of Virginia’s Arts & Sciences Magazine, the forum was moderated by Douglas Blackmon, the Atlanta bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal. The panel included UVa faculty members, Paul Freedman, Brian Nosek, Lynn Sanders, Vesla Weaver and Nick Winter.
Moderator, Douglas Blackmon called this point in time “an extraordinary moment in American history and American discourse,” while Associate Politics Professor Paul Freedman referred to this time as “Christmas” for political scientists because of the multicultural base of the presidential candidates.
Reflections on Race and Gender in Politics Forum [7:30m]:
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Freedman said the implicit message in political advertising is the important element of political ads. An example of this was a 2006 Republican ad run in Tennessee, concerning Democrat, Harold Ford, Jr. Freedman said, the ad included “a white woman who claimed to have had met Harold at the Playboy Party and she suggested that he call her, the ad concluded with the text on the screen, Harold Ford…’he’s just not right.’ And many people suggested that the implicit message was, ‘he’s just not white.’” Freedman added this year’s election has seen less of these types of messages.
Associate Politics Professor Lynn Sanders, spoke to the question, “will Obama lose this election due to race.” Referring to a recent Stanford AP poll and the subsequent media spin that Obama will lose the election by six to fifteen percent simply because he is black, Sanders said, “I think that it is really, really interesting how tied we are to that kind of pessimism. There is an alternative framework that we could be focusing on, which is… that we’re living in a time when we have accomplished such a feat that we can have these different kinds of candidates.” Referring to the Bradley/Wilder effect - when voters tell pollsters they are undecided or likely to vote for a black candidate, yet, on Election Day, they vote for the white candidate - Sanders said this effect has lessened over the past forty to fifty years and the reverse was observed in the 2006 Tennessee race between Ford and the Republican candidate.
Assistant Politics Professor Nick Winter spoke about the book he is working on, “The Secret History of Gender.” Winter said, looking at data from the last three decades, the Democratic party is associated with stereotypically feminine traits such as being “… compassionate, generous, egalitarian, and so forth and conversely they like the republican party for relatively stereotypically masculine characteristics, it’s efficient, supports the work ethic…” Yet, when it comes to Presidential candidates, he said the electorate tends to feel “… that our ideas about what it makes a good leader are themselves very associated with ideas about men and masculinity.”
Associate Professor of Psychology Brian Nosek’s data suggests that some political choices we make are influenced by “implicit” feelings toward blacks, women or the aged without us even realizing it. Nosek said of people who participate in his online surveys, “… 80% of white Americans who come on and try this task have a stronger association of black with bad, than white with bad, suggesting that they have associations in their minds that are quite distinct from the egalitarian values that they tend to express. Likewise with gender, it’s harder to associate female with leader or female with career than males, even if they will explicitly say, ‘no, I’m egalitarian minded… we don’t necessarily know that these things are happening.”
Mr. Blackmon observed that the research of the panelist had led to potentially opposed ideas of how much race and gender effect the election process.
Answering this question, Assistant Politics Professor Vesla Weaver satirically noted, that this may be the first time that professor Sanders and she had been considered the “racial optimist in a room.” She went on to say, “I’m certainly not saying that there aren’t negative racial attributions that happen. I do think we need to question how much the Bradley Effect has been overstated, how much the negative aspect of race is the thing that makes headlines, and what effect that has on perceptions, on people, on raising sensitivities, on looking for it.” Professor Sanders added that it was interesting “…the way conservative and optimistic, and liberal and pessimistic, are associated. And this is a real consistent theme in this year’s election.” She said that none of the panelist felt that bigotry and racism were no longer issues, yet much had changed in the short time since the 1960’s.
The goals of the panel to open public discussion on these issues were summarized by Professor Weaver’s salient comments concerning what would occur if the topic of race and gender were not brought to the public’s attention. Weaver said, the danger is not only, not having this type of public discourse, but that “it opens up space for a powerful counter narrative to develop on November 5th. And that is the counter narrative that, for blacks, for young voters, for anyone that was mobilized… and saw this as the first time their constituency was being spoken to, the counter narrative would be, if not now, then when.” She added, “it opens up a rift in that powerful American dream logic. It opens a rift in the notion that this is an egalitarian society. That we can move forward together… And so if we don’t have that very public conversation now about race, the public conversation that going to get had when we look in the mirror on November 5th is going to be a conversation that is going to be uglier.”
You’ve been listening to the Oscar Show, I’m Jacob Canon. Join us next week when we will discuss the work of Brad Cox, professor of physics and a principal investigator with the University of Virginia’s High Energy Physics Group and his involvement with the new Large Hadron Collider in Geneva Switzerland.
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09.24.08
Posted in Cognitive Science, Education, Jacob Canon, Politics, Social Psychology, The Oscar Show, UVa College of Arts & Sciences, University of Virginia, elections, ethics, history, sociology at 11:04 am by Jacob Canon
In today’s show, we introduce the Moderator and UVa Faculty panel participating in the Race and Gender in Politics Forum being held tomorrow evening at 7:00 PM at the Miller Center of Public Affairs, located at 2201 Old Ivy Road, in Charlottesville, VA. This event is free to the public.
With the election season upon us, and the diverse nature of the major candidates, Americans are faced with unique challenges when they go to the polls this November 4th. With the notable exception of Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, the major candidates for the office of President of the United States have been white males. But this election season, both major political parties have offered candidates that begin to explore the multicultural basis of our nation.
Race and Gender in Politics [5:48m]:
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Tomorrow evening, September 25th at 7:00PM, the Miller Center of Public Affairs will be hosting the UVa Faculty Round Table on Race and Gender in Politics. This event is sponsored by the University of Virginia’s Arts & Sciences Magazine will be Moderated by Douglas A Blackmon, the Atlanta bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal. This forum will discuss many of the issues that face the electorate this season. The panel will include UVa faculty members, Paul Freedman, Brian Nosek, Lynn Sanders, Vesla Weaver and Nick Winter.
The moderator, Douglas A. Blackmon, has written extensively about the American quandary of race. Many of his stories in The Wall Street Journal have explored the interplay of wealth, corporate conduct and racial segregation.
Associate Politics Professor Paul Freedman, has written about the negative advertising that is present in American politics, and has come to the conclusion that this type of discourse has positive effects in educating the public concerning issues. Freedman found that voters who saw more campaign advertising were more energized and knowledgeable.
Associate Professor of Psychology Brian Nosek’s interest in politics emerged while he was doing research in implicit cognition, which examines thought and feeling outside of awareness and control. His data suggests that some political choices we make may be influenced by “implicit” feelings toward blacks, women or the aged without us even realizing it.
Associate Politics Professor Lynn Sanders, has found another dynamic at work in the American political system. Sanders research has found there are differences in survey data received depending on the race of the interviewer and interviewee. If they are the same race, prejudices are more likely to be revealed. She found this evidenced by the differing results in the public vote of caucus states versus the private vote found in primaries states during the recent Democratic campaign.
Assistant Politics Professor Vesla Weaver’s research has detailed the disparities between the outcomes of whites to darker- and lighter-skinned blacks and Hispanics, including lower incomes, high incarceration rates and higher execution rates for the dark-skinned. Her data appears to show that the gradient of skin tone also appears to have an effect, and that this disparity carries over to politics as well.
Assistant Politics Professor Nick Winter’s book, Dangerous Frames explores the ways that political leaders can mobilize our ideas about race and gender in ways we don’t realize; his current project is exploring the ways that ideas about masculinity and femininity shape political discourse and public opinion.
So, as this multicultural dynamic changes the Presidential debate continues across America, you are invited to the Miller Center tomorrow evening, September 25th at 7:00 PM to hear this panel discuss gender and race and how they effect the political landscape.
The Miller Center address is 2201 Old Ivy Road, Charlottesville, VA. For more information or direction to the event please call 434-243-8974 or email Cristina Martinez de Andino at clm6q@virginia.edu.
For those who can’t attend, you can watch the forum online by going to www.millercenter.org and the link will appear on the home page shortly before the panel starts.
You’ve been listening to the Oscar Show, I’m Jacob Canon. Join us next week when we will follow up this show with comments and reflections from the UVa Faculty Roundtable concerning Race and Gender in Politics.
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01.30.08
Posted in Jacob Canon, The Oscar Show, UVa College of Arts & Sciences, University of Virginia, elections, ethics, technology, voting machines at 5:50 pm by Jacob Canon
In today’s show, adapted from an article published on the Oscar web site written by Andrea Arco, Director of Marketing for U.Va’s Engineering School, we examine the work of Bryan Pfaffenberger, associate professor at the University of Virginia’s School of Engineering and Applied Science and his study of mechanical-lever voting machines, their history and understanding the interaction between technology and culture that has been going on for more than a century.
History of Voting Machines [6:13m]:
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For more than a century, voting machines have helped shape American political history. The chaos of the 2000 presidential election in Florida and the alleged election fraud in Ohio during 2004, which led to testimony before congress about computer programs that could rig an election, demonstrate the crucial role that voting machines play in shaping the outcome of an election. Bryan Pfaffenberger, a historian of science and an associate professor at the University of Virginia’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, believes there is value in understanding that the interaction between technology and culture has been going on for more than a century.
His ongoing study is part of a larger Democracy and Technology program that he and colleagues are developing within UVa’s Department of Science, Technology and Society. Pfaffenberger said, “this initiative that has already sparked several cross-University collaborations and additions to the curriculum. It’s fitting that this initiative is underway at the university Thomas Jefferson founded. Jefferson strongly believed that engineers need to be good citizens; today, the need is greater than ever, so it’s important for science and engineering students indeed, students throughout the University to reflect on how technologies shape our democracy.”
Throughout most of the nineteenth century, U.S. voters got their ballots from political parties, who printed and distributed them at polling places. Voters would then hand their ballots to election clerks in full view of the public. This led to widespread vote-buying, because the vote buyers could see whether corrupted voters fulfilled their end of the bargain.
Beginning in 1888, a movement favoring the Australian secret ballot system swept the country. In this system, the government prints the paper ballots and voters mark them behind a privacy curtain. This cut down vote buying, but election fraud moved inside the polling place as corrupt officials learned other ways to swing an election. This was especially true in large cities, where political machines such as New York City’s Tammany Hall ran the show.
Because of this, and since New Yorks electoral votes often determined the outcome of presidential elections, these voting machines proved attractive because they kept paper out of the hands of election officials. The machines recorded votes directly on odometer-like counters. Still, not everyone liked the machines. For example, voters could not tell whether their votes were recorded as they had intended — or whether they were recorded at all. Paper ballots might have flaws, but at least there was a record of how people voted
Pfaffenberger said, “there’s an almost exact parallel between the debate we’re having today concerning electronic voting machines and the equally divisive, but completely forgotten, debate that greeted first-generation voting machine technology in the 1890s.” One side says, “trust machines, not people.” The other side says, “trust people, not machines.” Electronic “touch-screen” voting machines are today’s version of 1890s machines — they try to keep paper away from biased, partisan, or overworked human counters.
But voters are concerned that their votes aren’t recorded properly. The verified voting movement wants to put paper back in the process by requiring states to equip electronic voting machines with a printed audit trail. But some voting experts worry that, if the machines and paper continue to come up with different numbers, which has already happened in some municipal and state elections, we could see another presidential election meltdown that might make Florida 2000 look mild in comparison.
Happily, there’s a growing national consensus toward the use of optical scan voting machines, in which voters fill out a paper ballot by filling in bubbles next to candidates’ names. They then feed their ballot into a scanner, which tells them if they’ve made a mistake — and lets them have another chance. Voters can see that their votes were properly counted, and the ballots are kept in case machine malfunction is suspected. Dr. Pfaffenberger said, “After more than a century, the war between those who trust machines and those who trust people seems to be ending, finally. But it’s the voter who’s winning.”
You’ve been listening to the Oscar Show, I’m Jacob Canon. Join us next week as we again delve into the election season, when our topic will be the work of U.Va. cognitive psychologist Dennis Proffitt whose research focuses on creating computer interfaces to help make life more bearable for patients with ALS and other diseases that are the cause of locked-in syndrome.
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