Global Perspectives
NORTH AMERICAN CONGRESS ON LATIN AMERICA: The Political Opportunism of Drug War 'Spillover'
April 27, 2009
Zach Dyer
Phoenix recently became the first U.S. city that the mainstream media gave the notorious title of "kidnap capital." Articles in the press recount harrowing home invasions and violent crimes in the heart of suburban neighborhoods. The media and government officials chalk up the violence to "spillover" from the drug war currently wracking northern Mexico. But a closer examination of these issues casts doubt on the connection often made between cartel violence and crime on the U.S. side of the border region. Read more
ASU STATE PRESS: Stuck in the States
Economic woes impact decisions by students to study abroad
By: Tye Rabens
Published On: Monday, April 6, 2009
¿Cuánto cuesta? Wie viel Geld? 多少钱？ It doesn’t matter what language they ask it in: ASU students weighing their desire to study abroad against the costs of living in the current economic climate are left wondering, “How much money?” Read more...
THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION: A Research University Copes with Budget Cuts...
A Research University Copes With Budget Cuts and Skeptical Lawmakers
By Eric Kelderman
Tucson, Ariz.
Published Mar. 17, 2009
To be at the University of Arizona these days is to be, in some ways, under siege.
The flagship university in one of the nation’s fastest-growing states may have to eliminate some 600 jobs and merge dozens of programs to deal with two rounds of budget cuts imposed since June, and now the governor is telling the university and other state agencies to prepare for cuts of as much as 20 percent for the next fiscal year. Read more...
NEWSWEEK: A Team of Expatriates
Many of Obama's top advisers, like an increasing number of Americans, have learned and lived abroad.
By Jeffrey Bartholet and Daniel Stone | NEWSWEEK
Published Jan 17, 2009
From the magazine issue dated Jan 26, 2009
II. The fact that Valerie Jarrett spent her early childhood in Iran made it easier to bond with Barack Obama. The subject came up the first time the two met, at a restaurant in the Loop area of downtown Chicago in 1991. Obama had grown up overseas—spending four years in Indonesia as a boy—and Jarrett was born in the ancient city of Shiraz, where her American father, a medical doctor, helped found the city's first modern hospital. Valerie's early languages were Farsi, French and "a little bit of English." To this day, her favorite foods include lamb and rice with Persian spices. "If I walk into a house and I smell saffron, I'm happy," she says. Read more...
INSIDE HIGHER ED: International Study Shouldn't Be Elective
Every American decade has its archetypes. If you were heading off to business school in the 1980s, you might have wondered – or even worried – you’d end up like Alex Keaton from the hit TV series “Family Ties.” Alex scoffed at the Peace Corps past of his parents, and believed he could amass all the wealth and status that he wanted without being too concerned about the political affairs of the world around him — beyond, perhaps, advocating for lower tax rates on capital gains. Read more...