In his latest Baltimore Sun column, UMBC political science professor Thomas F. Schaller critiques conservative pundits’ concerns about “redistributive welfare” in the U.S. today. Schaller argues, “the threat of socialism swallowing America is as imaginary as a Martian invasion.” He writes:

In fact, on almost any measure — from the growing share of income earned or wealth controlled by either the top 1 percent or 10 percent; the geometric rise in CEO-to-worker pay ratio; the declining rates of intergenerational mobility that reinforce and exacerbate these disparities — America is not becoming more socialist, nor is the country’s wealth being redistributed. (At least not from rich to poor.)

Read the full commentary at the Baltimore Sun.

The Cricket Hall of Fame in Hartford, Connecticut will hold its annual induction ceremony Saturday in Hartford, Connecticut. The Class of 2012 includes Jamie Harrison, president of the United States Youth Cricket Association (http://usyca.org), as well as West Indian fast bowler Courney Walsh and former USACA Exceutive Secretary John Aaron.

Harrison is a member of the UMBC Class of 2010 and a staffer with the Department of Information Technology.

http://www.crickethalloffame.org
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Youth_Cricket_Association

Language, Literacy, and Culture PhD candidate Amy Pucino ’15 was profiled by Diverse on September 18th for her volunteer work with UMBC’s Refugee Youth Project (RYP).

Pucino spoke with the magazine about her personal experience with aiding a family of Iraqis who fled their country during the Iraq War and relocated to Baltimore. She helped the family on issues ranging from English tutoring to navigating the city’s institutions in order to help them obtain housing and health care. The experience inspired Pucino to base her dissertation on “the relationships between Iraqi refugees and those who play an educational role in their lives.”

“Through working with the family, I’ve picked up that the Iraqi population is an increasing population across the U.S. It’s our social responsibility to figure out ways to better serve the increasing population here. It taught me the importance of the need to work better with diverse communities. I wanted to do research that had some sort of practical application,” she said.

History professor George Derek Musgrove spoke The Greene County Democrat for aSeptember 26th story entitled “Newswire: Cong. Maxine Waters cleared of House ethics charges.” The story concerned Congresswoman Maxine L. Waters (D-Calif.) and her recent acquittal on violating ethics codes in the U.S. House of Representatives. Rep. Waters ws investigated by the House Ethics Committee for advocating for inclusion of minority-owned banks in the federal Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) while her husband Sidney Williams was still invested in one such bank, OneUnited Bank.

Musgrove, a ’97 alumnus of UMBC, recently published the book Rumor, Repression, and Racial Politics: How the Harassment of Black Elected Officials Shaped Post-Civil Rights America, which examines the history of governmental investigations of black elected officials in the United States after the 1960’s and those politicians’ allegations of state and media bias against them.

The professor said that the case could have ramifications in terms of future ethics probes being muddied by partisan applications. “Based on our current political climate, it is all but certain that conflicts like this, both real and imagined, will come up in the future that both political parties will try to use them against the opposition and that voters will find themselves in a difficult position yet again, trying to figure out whether their member really does deserve sanction or if they’re just doing the same thing that everybody else is doing,” he said.

Akomo Ntoso Cabaret

Friday, October 19, 2012

7:00pm

The Commons, Skylight Room

UMBC ID = FREE

General Admission = $10.00

Multi-Cultural Festival

Friday, October 5, 2012

4:30 pm

University Center, Balltoom

UMBC ID = FREE

General Admission = $5.00