Presidential Panels

A new feature on this year’s program is the designation of special “president’s-choice” panels. Topics selected by ASA President Frances Fox Piven explore aspects of the meeting theme in greater depth or focus on issues of special interest to the President.

The Social Contract and American Democracy [Details]

Organizer:   Peter Dreier, Occidental College

Panel: Linda McQuaig, journalist and author
           Jacob Hacker, Yale University
           Bob Kuttner, The American Prospect
           Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Bait and Switch
              and Nickel and Dimed

On many measures of social well-being and civic health, the United States ranks last or near the bottom compared with other affluent democratic societies (OECD member nations). These measures include the poverty rate, the distribution of wealth and income, the proportion of people with health insurance, the infant morality rate, life expectancy, math and reading scores at various age levels, violent crime (including murder), the proportion of people in prison, voter turnout, and union membership, paid vacations, annual hours worked, and other indicators. Some argue that the United States' ranking on these measures is a trade-off between inequality and prosperity, but others observe that OECD nations with significantly less inequality, poverty, and social misery have levels of prosperity and productivity equal to or greater than the United States. Some suggest that these social and civic conditions reflect Americans' values and public opinion, which prefers individual liberty over social equality and which distrusts active government, especially in terms of taxation and redistribution. Others note that American public opinion is more supportive of the general goals of social democracy (for example, universal health insurance) and that America's low level of social provision and higher level of social misery is not an accurate measure of mass public opinion but a reflection of the realities of who has political power and the growing influence of conservative political forces in recent decades. Although social democratic policies are under assault in many countries, the United States is typically the outlier on most measures of social well-being and civic health. This panel will examine the debate over "American exceptionalism" and explore whether U.S. political support can be mobilized for public policies that seriously address the realities of poverty, inequality, and their social, economic, and civic consequences.

The Politics of Natural Disasters [Details]


	Organizer and Presider: Kai Erikson, Yale University

Is Another World Possible in the Middle East? [Details]


	Organizer and Presider: Michael Schwartz, Stony Brook University Speakers: Juan Cole, University of Michigan Gilbert Achcar, Centre Marc Bloch, Berlin This panel will speak to the theme of the conference by referencing both current dynamics and the future possibilities in the Middle East.

Globalization or Regionalization? [Details]

Organizer and Presider: Jonathan D. Shefner
                                    University of Tennessee

Panel: Walden Bello, University of Philippines
           Diliman Teivo Teivainen, San Marcos National University,
               Peru
           Boaventura de Sousa Santos, University of Coimbra, Portugal
               and University of Wisconsin Law School

Has market liberal globalization set in motion a trend towards regionalization as a counter-movement? Are regions emerging to resist and reshape global economic and political trends? The wave of center-left governments being elected to power in Latin America demonstrates regional capacity to consolidate in ways that resist the Washington consensus. The EU's new production and consumption standards may be shaping global production in ways that shift economic power. China’s economic rise could create an East Asian region that will counterbalance U.S. power. This panel will address these changes and others in the effort to assess how new regional economies and politics may be shifting global processes.

Academic Freedom Under Attack [Details]


	Organizer: Paul J. DiMaggio, Princeton University Presider: Sherryl Kleinman, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Panel: Neil L. Gross, Harvard University Jonathan Cole, Columbia University Ellen Messer-Davidow, University of Minnesota Cat Warren, North Carolina State University