Greetings Poli Students,

Non-Partisan Maryland is seeking politically minded student volunteers, campaign coordinators, media coordinators, petition circulators, etc. 

This is an opportunity for students to get involved with a grassroots US Senate campaign, to study an active lawsuit against the Maryland State Board of Elections, to promote the development of “Non-Partisan Maryland”, and to promote and study the “Open Our Democracy Act of 2015; HR 2655”. 

Attached you will find a one page information sheet.

Best,

Political Science

In a short documentary produced by KCTS, the PBS affiliate in Seattle, examining the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act and its impact on the Pacific Northwest and the rest of the country’s population, Amy Bhatt described the economic environment that early immigrants in the Northwest encountered.

“The Pacific Northwest has a very unique place in American history, because it did offer many of these early South Asians a way to both situate themselves and become economically productive very early on,” Bhatt said in the documentary. “Now, this was also a period in time when we saw a lot of restriction of immigration from Asia.”

Bhatt, an assistant professor of gender and women’s studies, also described the aftermath of the Immigration Act in the documentary: “There was a great deal of opposition to this act in 1965, and, in fact, when it was passed, Lyndon B. Johnson, in a very famous speech, says that this is a moment that we’re opening the doors but it’s not going to fundamentally change the fabric of American society. We know now that that was pretty radically wrong, and instead what we see is that the United States fundamentally does change as a result of this.”

Bhatt is author of Roots and Reflections: South Asians in the Pacific Northwest. Read more about her work on the gender and women’s studies website.

Bryce Peake, a new assistant professor of media and communication studies, recently published an ethnographic study he conducted with a colleague at Central Washington University on the September pro-Confederate flag rally in Washington, D.C. The article “Viral Landscapes in the Public Square: the Confederate Flag visits the U.S. Capitol,” was published on the Centre for Imaginative Ethnography’s website.

As part of the study, Peake and his colleague Mark Auslander spent time interviewing participants on both sides of the protests and edited the audio interviews down to a five minute sequence of overlapping voices: “Reviewing the audio, we noted that it is often difficult to tease out which side is being represented in speeches or interviews, without access to the visual framing devices of flags and protest signs. For all their deep political divides, the competing participants share a deep distrust of the state, and are all profoundly critical of mainstream representations of American history,” they wrote.

Further analyzing the audio they collected, the authors noted that “the pro-Confederate demonstrators understand themselves as coming to the nation’s capital and its house of government to petition for redress. In contrast, the anti-flag forces aren’t framing things in national terms as such. For them, they are defending their city against outsiders. ‘Leave our city. Take that flag and run! Take your evil hatred and go home!'”

Peake hopes the audioscape will be a resource for classroom discussions about readings on political theory and democratic dialog. Peake specializes in international communication, research methodologies, gender politics, and science and technology studies. Read more about his work on the media and communication studies department website.

Following John Boehner’s retirement announcement on September 25, Thomas Schaller, professor and chair of political science, wrote that the House Speaker’s time in office will be more defined by the political environment he inherited than some of the decisions he made while in office. Schaller’s column, “House of Shards,” was published in The American Prospect soon after Boehner’s announcement.

“To appreciate Boehner’s fraught tenure, it’s important to recall the years preceding Boehner’s 2011 ascension,” Schaller wrote, before describing the Wall Street bailout vote in 2008 and the rise of the Tea Party movement in 2010.

“So it was that in January 2011 Boehner became the first Republican speaker in GOP history to lead without the benefit of a companion Senate Republican majority. By his second term as speaker, his caucus was comprised two-thirds of members elected in 2006 or later, with half of the caucus elected in 2010 and 2012 elections alone. Forget his barkeeper father’s Republican Party: This wasn’t even his own Republican Party,” Schaller added.

Schaller also mentioned that the 2011 debt ceiling negotiations and the 2013 government shutdown when Boehner was heavily involved should be taken into account when reflecting on his tenure as House Speaker, but they should be balanced with his successes, including helping to avert two recent government shutdowns.

“No matter how many deal-with-the-devil accommodations Boehner made with members of his unruly House coalition to hang onto power, remember the shining moments when he pushed back.”