OCTOBER 5,1976
No. 28
LYNDON B. JOHNSON
SCHOOL OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN
EDITOR Hoyt H. Purvis
Plans for a conference
on Conflict, Order, and Peace in the Americas to be held at the LBJ School November 10-12
have been announced by Professor Kenneth Boulding.
The conference is
sponsored by the Distinguished Visiting Tom Slick Professorship in World Peace
at the LBJ School and Professor Boulding is the first to hold the Slick Professorship.
The conference will
bring together scholars from Latin America and the United States along with
current and former government and international officials. They will consider
questions relating to economic development—or the lack of such development;
interdependence; and intervention and violence in the Americas.
A highlight of the
conference will be three dialogues in which prominent figures representing
divergent points of view will discuss the issues. On November 10 Jacques
Chonchol, adjunct professor at the Unitersity of Paris and a former Minister of
Agriculture under the Allende Government in Chile, and William Colby, former
director of the Central Intelligence Agency, will discuss "Intervention
and Violence in the Americas."
The November 11
dialogue will feature Arnold Harberger, chairman of the Department of Economics
at the University of Chicago, and a consultant to several Latin American
governments, and Enrique Iglesias, executive secretary of the United Nations
Economic Commission for Latin America, discussing "The Roots of
Maldevelopment."
The conference will
end on November 12 with Boulding and Johan Galtung, professor, Chair in
Conflict and Peace Research, at the University of Oslo, Norway, discussing
"Dependency and Interdependence as Determinants of Hemispheric
Peace."
Helvi L. Sipila, UN
assistant secretary for social development and humanitarian affairs, and
highest-ranking woman in the UN, will open the conference Wednesday afternoon
November 10 in the LBJ Auditorium.
The dialogues are
scheduled for each evening of the conference and will also be in the
auditorium.
On November 11 and 12
daytime sessions will be held in the East Campus Lecture Hall and scholars will
present a series of papers on a variety of Latin American-related subjects.
Presentation of the papers will be followed by discussions.
Those scheduled to
present and discuss papers and their topics include:
Hugh Holley,
economist, Bank of London and South America (presenter), and Raimo Vayrynen,
research fellow, Tampere Peace Research Institute, Finland; secretary-general,
International Peace Research Association (discussant)—The Roots of
Dis-development in the Southern Cone.
Marina Bandeira, joint
secretary, Pontifical Commission of Justice and Peace of Brazil
(presenter)— Culture and Conflict in the Latin American Experience.
James F. Petras,
professor of sociology, State University of New York at Binghamton, and author
of numerous articles and several books on Latin America (presenter), and
Francis Beer, professor political scinece, University of Colorado, and
director, Conflict and Peace Studies Program (discussant)—The Image
and Reality of Violence in Latin American History.
Ximena Bunster,
visiting professor of anthropology, University of Connecticut at Storrs; former
professor at the University of Chile, Santiago (presenter), and Betty Reardon,
director, Schools Program, Institute for World Order (discussant)—Women
and Development in Latin America.
Irving Louis Horowitz,
author and professor of sociology and political science, Rutgers University
(presenter), and Marvin Alisky, professor of political science, Arizona State
University (discussant)—The Military Role in the Development Process.
Enrique Dussel,
Secretariado Social Mexicana, Mexico City (presenter), and Brady Tyson,
professor of international relations and Latin American studies, American
University (discussant)—Democracy as a Social Value in Latin America.
Gonzalo Arroyo,
director, Study Group on Agriculture and Development in the Third World,
University of Paris at Nanterre, and former professor at the University of
Chile and Catholic University of Chile (presenter)—Contemporary
Violence in Latin America.
Ernesto Schiefelbein,
Regional Employment Program for Latin America and the Caribbean, International
Labor Organization, Santiago, Chile (presenter), Judith Torney, associate
professor of psychology, University of Illinois at Chicago Circle
(discussant)—Education and Social Structure in Latin America.
Professor Bruce
Russett of Yale University will also present a paper.
Russett is the editor
of the Journal of Conflict Resolution.
Further details on the
conference will be announced in forthcoming editions of The Record.
The new election laws
being administered by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) "are taking
the money mystery out of politics" according to Neil Stabler, member of
the FEC.
Stabler was at the LBJ
School on September 27-28, speaking to the topical seminar on Electoral
Politics taught by John Gronouski and to a brown-bag luncheon. While here
Stabler also held a press conference at the State Capitol and was interviewed
for KLRN television by Greg Roberson, LBJ School student.
Stabler, a former
Member of Congress and former chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party, said
the new laws will result in "a higher degree of credibility in our
election system."
He said, "1976
will be a new experience in politics—the first election where we may know
what happens money-wise."
He noted that the
Presidential election is being entirely financed by the public from $1 tax
checkoffs, although each political party can raise money through already
existing state and local committees, which could bring a maximum of an
additional $8 million into each party's treasury. That means each of the two
major Presidential candidates will have less than $30 million to spend in the
campaign, since they are allotted $21.8 million each by the FEC.
Stabler pointed out
that this is "a far cry from 1972 when the candidates had at least $70
million and $40 million respectively to spend on the campaign."
However, Stabler
expressed the view that this year's ceilings are "perhaps too low,"
and suggested that the figure may increase in the future.
Stabler said, "I
never expected we would get a law as comprehensive as this. It doesn't surprise
me that there are a few loopholes, and Congress can correct them for the
future."
Stabler said that the
spending ceilings mean that greater emphasis is placed on the actual
effectiveness of the candidate and the work of their staffs and volunteers.
"Volunteer work would amount to a great deal if you could put a price tag
on it," he said.
Stabler said he hopes
and expects the trend toward declining voter participation in elections will be
reversed this year. He attributed the decline to the effects of Watergate and
Vietnam, combined with traditional public cynicism about politics.
Noting that young
people are consistently the largest group of nonvoters, Stabler said, "It
is ironic that the young, who have the greatest stake in the future, are the
least interested in determining what the future will be . . . "
Stabler praised the
LBJ School for "helping to stimulate greater interest and greater public
participation in public affairs."
Professor Michael S.
Voslensky will speak at a schoolwide seminar Wednesday, October 6 at 4 p.m. His
topic will be "Peaceful Coexistence and Soviet Decision-Making in the
Field of International Policy."
Voslensky, who is in
the United States under the auspicies of the Center for International Strategic
Studies at Georgetown University, was a prominent academician in the Soviet
Union prior to leaving that country in 1972. He was associated with the
Institute of World Economics and International Relations at the Academy of
Sciences of the USSR, and was a professor at Lumumba University. He also worked
as a journalist and was deputy editor of the bulletin of the World Peace
Council. Voslensky represented the Soviet Union at numerous international
meetings. He has written extensively on the role of German in international
affairs.
In recent years he has
been a visiting scientist and visiting professor at universities in West
Germany and Austria.
. Lynn Moak, director of research in the Texas
Lieutenant Governor's Office will speak at a brown-bag luncheon in the Student
Lounge at 12 noon on Tuesday October 5. Moak will be introduced by Carol
McDonald who interned in the Lieutenant Governor's Office.
. An article by Professor Emmette S. Redford is
included in the bicentennial issue of the Administrative Law Review. The summer, 1976, issue is devoted to
"The Administrative Process: Present Status, Future Trends." Redford,
recognized as a leading authority on government regulation, wrote an article
entitled "Regulation Revisited."
. Professor Stephen Spurr will be in the Soviet
Union for three weeks in October with a cultural exchange group returning a
similar visit by a Soviet group last March. The subject is universities in
Moscow, Talinn, Kiev, and Tashkent.
. Alumni, faculty, and staff of the LBJ School
are invited to the next "Start-Off-the-Week-Right" gathering at
Scholz' Garden on Monday October 11 from 5 to 7 p.m.
. Bonnie Fisher is the first-year student who has
been selected by President Lorene Rogers to serve on the Dean Selection
Committee.
. Recently published by the National Research
Council was a report on "Renewable Resources for Industrial
Materials," by the National Academy of Sciences-NRC Committee on Renewable
Resources for Industrial Materials. Professor Stephen Spurr was a member of the
committee and chairman of Panel I, on biological productivity of renewable
resources used as industrial materials. A copy of the report is available in Spurr's
office and the volume of the panel report is being printed.
. Columbia Journalism Review has a brief review of an article which
appeared in Public Affairs Comment earlier this year. Of the article on "News Media Coverage of Texas
Government: The State Capital Press Corps" by Hoyt Purvis and Rick Gentry,
the Review said:
"Urging that the press in state capitals serve as local watchdog much as
the Washington press corps serves nationally, the LBJ School of Public Affairs
has prepared a useful report on the relationship of the media and government in
Austin. The conclusion is encouraging: the press in Texas has made significant
progress in its watchdog function. Future growth and complexity of state
government will require even more."
. The Office of Student Affairs and the student
representatives are hosting a series of student-faculty-staff mixers at
Elizabeth Hall's home, 2509 Hartford Road. During the next two to three months,
students will be contacted by memo. Faculty and staff members who are interested
in attending should let the OSA know so that dates can be confirmed. The first
of the mixers was held October 3. Those attending are asked to bring a covered
dish offering, and a list of "who's bringing what" will be posted in
the OSA. "To avoid having 50 varieties of French Onion Dip, it is strongly
suggested that anyone who plans to attend drop by the OSA and let us know what
you're bringing," Ms. Hall said.
An exhibit of almost
3,000 photographs depicting some of the most beautiful highways in America is
on display in the lower lobby at the LBJ School outside the East Campus Lecture
Hall and LBJ Library.
The exhibit is
sponsored by the office of the U.S. Secretary of Transportation, and is
administered by the Federal Highway Administration and the UT Austin Council
for Advanced Transportation Studies (CATS), the College of Engineering, and the
School of Architecture.
The 1976 exhibit,
"The Highway and Its Environment," is the ninth such exhibit intended
to give public recognition to agencies, organizations and business enterprises
which have taken action to protect, preserve, or enhance areas near highways.
Categories include new
and rebuilt highways in the city and country, structural features, rest areas
and information centers, highway-oriented enterprises, multiple use of
right-of-way, treatment of historic, cultural or natural environment and
landscaping.
Approximately 380
entries from 45 states have been contributed for the exhibit.
The exhibit is open
through October 24.
The first statewide
meeting for public officials responsible for fire and police civil service in
Texas cities was held here September 21-28.
The LBJ School
sponsored the meeting as its third Public Personnel Management Institute.
Cooperating in the
institute was the Texas Association of Personnel and Civil Service Directors.
Sessions were held in
UT's Thompson Conference Center.
Al Levin, senior
assistant city attorney for Houston, gave the opening address on "Police
and Fire Civil Service in Texas: Contemporary Perspective."
A lecture on the Texas
Civil Service Law was given by Charles A. Easterling, city attorney of
Pasadena.
Workshop topics
included the conduct of civil service hearings and appeals, civil service
testing for entry and promotion, fire and police collective bargaining, and
recent court rulings pertaining to the civil service law.
The program was
designed for new and experienced civil service commissioners, civil service and
personnel directors, city attorneys and other interested public officials.
Robert J. Macdonald,
associate director of the LBJ School's Office of Conferences and Training,
explains that fire and police civil service under the Texas law "gives
employees many of the same protections of a union," but the law is not
mandatory for a city. Whether or not a city's fire and police departments are
brought under the state civil service law must be determined by a city
election, he said.
Two Student
Independent Project Reports have been published recently by the LBJ School.
A case study of the
new Congressional budget process by John Shillingburg and a report on American
Covert Action by James Dear
are the two new reports.
Shillingburg's report,
entitled Budget Information for the New Congressional Budget Process: A Case
Study of Two Problems, results
from a year-long project in conjunction with the Congressional Budget Office
(CBO). The study was made possible by a grant from the Lyndon Baines Johnson
Foundation.
The case study
examines two aspects of the changing informational needs of Congress following
the establishment of the new budget process after passage of the Congressional
Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974. One aspect is the new emphasis
placed on the functional categories within the budget as both information and
decision-making structures; the other aspect is the new information needed to
meet the requirements of the authorizing committees as new participants in the
budget process.
Shillingburg served an
internship with the CBO and is now employed there.
Dear's report also
results from a year-long project during which he interviewed and corresponded
with a number of individuals who have been associated with United States
foreign intelligence programs and policies or who have studied and written on
the subject.
In the report the
author analyzes the development of covert action capability by the United
States; the controversy over covert action; and possible future policies in
regard to covert action.
Although conceding
that covert action is an "aberration" of the American political
system, Dear suggests that preserving a covert action capability would give
U.S. foreign policy needed flexibility.
Copies of both reports
are avail-in the Office of Publications. The Shillingburg report sells for $3,
while American Covert Action
is priced at $2.50.
A rather grim forecast
for the future availability of energy was provided by Professor Kenneth
Boulding, Distinguished Visiting Tom Slick Professor of World Peace at the LBJ
School, in a schoolwide lecture on September 29 in the Thompson Center.
Boulding predicted
vast changes in the lifestyle of Americans, and commented, "I suspect that
the decay of many civilizations in the past was a result of using up of energy
stocks . . . "
"Boulding spoke
on Energy: The 100-Years Crisis and All That. He is a member of the National Academy of
Sciences Committee on Nuclear and Alternative Sources of Energy.
"The energy
crisis of the next 100 years is that oil and gas are almost certainly going to
be goine in your lifetime. We might have unexpected discoveries, but most of
the geologists tell us that oil and gas will be effectively gone by about 2020
on a world scale," Boulding said.
He added, "It
will be gone in Texas long before that and The University of Texas will have to
go back to taxes."
Boulding noted that
coal will last longer "but if we use coal as a substitute for oil and
gas—that is, if we gasify coal, it will be gone, I'm pretty sure, in 100
or 150 years.
The prospects for
uranium are no better, Boulding said. "Uranium 235, which we use now, will
be gone in 50 years. The light-water reactor has no future. On the other hand,
the breeder reactor expands the horizon perhaps 100 years. But all the breeder
can give us is electricity. It is not really a fuel and in that sense there is
no substitute anywhere on the horizon."
Boulding said, "I
don't think you will live to see the extinction of the automobile, but you may
live to see it become a privilege of the rich."
"And it is very
hard to visualize a coal-powered airplane," Boulding said. "Without
oil I don't think we'll have airplanes; that is, the air age may be a flash in
the pan."
"We may go back
to streetcars and public transportation," Boulding commented.
Boulding was not
sanguine about prospects for large-scale use of solar energy.
"The price of
electricity will have to rise six times before a solar power station done by
mirrors will be feasible ... and the Sierra Club won't like all the Mojave
Desert covered with mirrors ... and who will wash them? Solar energy is not
easy and Barry Commoner is out of his mind."
Commenting that some
people are "grotesquely unrealistic" about solar energy, Boulding
said, "there is a little good news about solar."
He said, "We are
going to have solar hot-water heaters which are cheap and we are going to have
supplementary solar heating for houses and buildings. By 2020 it wouldn't be at
all surprising if 20
percent of our energy
requirements for heat are produced by solar energy."
"There are very
difficult technical problems," Boulding said, "although there is
always the unexpected ... we may discover something that will make it
easier."
Boulding said that
other energy sources such as wind and geothermal will be used, but strictly in
a supplementary fashion.
"It is
inconceivable that anything can be cheaper than oil and gas," he said.
Boulding also
discussed the impact of the energy crisis on the international system.
He said, "One of
the rather cheerful things emerging from the United States' dependence on
foreign oil—and we are dependent and will be dependent—is that it
looks like the Russians are going to be dependent on our wheat."
Boulding said he thought
the probability of a war with the Soviet Union "is quite low unless we
have very bad luck." He added, "The Russians are behaving with
extraordinary folly, particularly in regard to their navy. What do the Russians
want with all that navy? I can't imagine."
He said, "Our
relations with the Russians are, I think, moving toward the sort of relations
we've had with the British. We don't have any real conflicts. We don't like
each other, but there are people who are married who don't like each
other."