LBJ School faculty
in the news

LBJ School faculty members continue to be highly visible in the local and national media. Here is a sampling of recent media appearances.

Robert D. Auerbach

Barron's Magazine interviewed Professor Robert Auerbach for an article that appeared on November 21. In the article—"The Greenspan Tapes: Cloud Hovers Over Fed's Record on Transparency"—Auerbach suggests that Federal Reserve tapes be preserved, not erased, and that edited transcripts be released in six months rather than five years.

Michele Deitch

Adjunct Professor Michele Deitch was interviewed by NPR and KUT (listen) in November after the death of David Ruiz, a well-known prisoner whose lawsuit over prison conditions led to the landmark prison reform lawsuit in Texas (Ruiz v. Estelle). The story was broadcast nationally on NPR's "Day to Day" and also on KUT on Friday, November 18.

Deitch also wrote an Austin American-Statesman commentary called "On prison rape, Texas tries to report it right," which was published on November 9 and later posted on the LBJ School web site.

Gary Chapman

In an opinion piece that appeared in the Austin American-Statesman on December 2, LBJ School Lecturer Gary Chapman spoke about being "trapped in the deepening divide over Iraq." The article appeared a couple of days after President Bush delivered his plan for Iraq at the Naval Academy. Chapman concluded his op-ed by stating that the cost to the country will come not only in terms of troops lost and dollars spent, but also in painful divisions among individuals.

Edwin Dorn

Following the death of Austin civil rights leader Volma Overton, Professor Ed Dorn was interviewed by KXAN, the local NBC affiliate, and The Daily Texan. Overton, who was a key player in the 1960s civil rights movement, spoke at "Civil Rights: From Black and White to Color," a symposium organized by a policy research project led by Dorn in March 2004.

James K. Galbraith

In an article called "Smith vs. Darwin" that appears in the December issue of Mother Jones, LBJ School Professor James K. Galbraith discusses intelligent design and explains how his fellow economists "have been Intelligent Designers since the beginning."

In October, Galbraith also participated in an "Online NewsHour" segment that focused on the nomination of Ben Bernanke, who was nominated to replace Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan.

While in Adelaide, Australia, in November for an event at the Hawke Institute for Research, Galbraith was interviewed by the University of Western Sydney's Whitlam Institute. The interview touched on a number of topics, including the backlash against globalization that was manifested during the last G8 meeting, global inequalities, the concept of "full employment," Third World debt and the economics profession.

Alan J. Kuperman

Assistant Professor Alan Kuperman was quoted twice by the Daily Texan during October. On October 7 the topic was the Senate's ban on torture and on October 27 the topic was the impact that back-to-back disasters have had on donations to help victims of the Pakistan earthquake.

Kuperman has also been sharing his thoughts via letters to the editors of two of the nation's best known newspapers. On October 12 he wrote to the New York Times to add to an ongoing discussion about the number of Democrats and Republicans in elite university faculties.

Later, on October 25, another of his letters appeared in the Washington Post, this one offering a rebuttal to an earlier report that found that combat deaths and armed conflicts are on a decline. Kuperman wrote, "Unfortunately, the cited study counted as war deaths only those killed in combat, excluding the victims of associated genocide and deprivation. Since 1998, for example, wars in Congo and Sudan have caused an estimated 4 million deaths--rendering ludicrous the report's assertion that armed conflicts kill only 600 a year."

Max Sherman

Professor Emeritus Max Sherman, who is a former Texas state senator, was interviewed by Florida's Sun-Sentinel for a story called "Republican legislators want 'sunset review' for state agencies." The story, which appeared on November 29, uses Texas as a case study for Florida, who is considering building a system similar to the one established in Texas in the late 1970s to consolidate and abolish state government agencies.

Sherman was also interviewed for an Austin American-Statesman story about President Bush's jury summons before a state district judge in Waco. The article appeared on December 2.

James B. Steinberg

LBJ School Incoming Dean James Steinberg has been featured recently in a number of papers around the country. On November 5, the Washington bureau of the Houston Chronicle published a story called "Lifetime in politics steels new dean: A former deputy security adviser for Clinton is hired to raise the profile of the LBJ School."

Steinberg has also written commentaries or been interviewed for national security and Iraq-related stories. These include "Preventive war, a useful tool," a December 4th Los Angeles Times opinion piece cowritten by Ivo Daalder, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution; and "Democrats find Iraq alternative is elusive," a story that ran on December 5.

Peter M. Ward

The Miami Herald featured comments by Professor Peter Ward on November 6. The topic was the random admission process used by the Autonomous University of Mexico City. While supporters of the system call it "well thought out," Ward described it as "populism gone mad."