U.S.-Mexican program merged into new UT center
 

Under a new funding agreement with the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the U.S.-Mexican Policy Studies Program is being absorbed by a newly created Center for Inter-American Policy Studies.

The center is a joint venture between the LBJ School and the UT Austin Institute of Latin American Studies (ILAS). It is headed by LBJ School Professor Chandler Stolp and Economics Professor William Glade, who is the director of the ILAS Mexican Center.

The U.S.-Mexican Policy Studies Program was established in 1988 with a three-year grant from the Hewlett Foundation and has continued to receive funding from that group since then. Over the years the program has been involved in many activities. It has sponsored conferences and workshops, supported policy research projects, published a series of books, and established links with research institutions in Mexico.

Stolp, who took over the direction of the program from LBJ School Professor Sidney Weintraub when he retired from the university in 1996, explained that the scope of the U.S.-Mexican Policy Studies Program has now expanded to embrace U.S.-Latin American policy relations more broadly.

"It's difficult today to separate complexities of the U.S.-Mexican relation from more general U.S.-Latin American relations," he said. He emphasized that U.S.-Mexican policy studies will continue to be a central priority for the new center and added that the original program's name and logo will remain in its publication series.

"The new Center for Inter-American Policy Studies will support policy-related research, courses, and institutional linkages that speak primarily to the intersection of U.S. and Latin American policymaking and, secondarily, to intra-Latin American policy issues that offer lessons to other settings within the hemisphere," Stolp said. "Among other projects, we are planning on developing a doctoral portfolio program in inter-American policy studies. This will be the first such effort in the United States."

Comments to lbjwmast@uts.cc.utexas.edu