Teaching Foreign Policy with Memoirs

Excerpts from the memoirs of high foreign policy officials, if carefully selected and structured, can be a valuable resource in the teaching of diplomatic history, American foreign policy, and international relations. Two decades of teaching a memoirs-only course to mid-career military officers and foreign affairs professionals in a seminar discussion format reveals many of their advantages. Memoirs are interesting reading that rarely fail to engage a reader's attention; they impart detailed knowledge of historical events; they provide a rich understanding of process and the neglected area of policy implementation; like case studies, they let students build vicarious experience in policymaking and execution; and they often provide what Alexander George called "policy-relevant generalizations." While lack of objectivity can be a serious drawback of first-person accounts, it provides its own lessons on the nature of history and can be offset by using multiple accounts of the same events and by combining memoirs with documents and historical works, or countering analytical studies. Although picking the most interesting and worthwhile excerpts, getting them in students' hands, and accommodating their length within the boundaries of a standard college course are additional challenges, professors who take them on should find that memoirs add a new level of excitement and realism to their courses.     

Managing Prisoners as Problem Populations and the Evolving Nature of Imprisonment: A Convict Perspective

This article employs a convict perspective toexamine the evolving nature of imprisonment inthe United States. Drawing from the prisonliterature, and placed within the politicaleconomy of the wider society, it utilizespersonal accounts of the author (an ex-convict)and his interactions with prisoners to providea critical look at the changing structures,inequities, and hierarchical social relationsof the prison system and their effect on thelives of people behind bars.     

Paths to Market for Supply Push Technology Transfer

The Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Technology Transfer (T²RERC) advances the methods of technology transfer through research, transforms technologies into products through development, and facilitates the commercialization of new and improved assistive technology devices. This paper reviews the T²RERC's process and the three primary Paths to Market employed by the T²RERC for new products proceeding through its Supply Push program (Lane, 1999) in a case study format.     

Tax increment financing as a municipal revenue: helping the legislature get it right

Tax increment financing raises revenue for public infrastructure in a redevelopment district by capturing increased property tax revenue stimulated by the redevelopment. TIF has left a long trail of intergovernmental controversy. Cities in Washington State, which approved TIF in 1982, have yet to complete a project. After two failed constitutional amendment campaigns, a test case was initiated to validate TIF before the state supreme court. The cities lost. This article examines the technique, this case, and lessons for making tax increment financing available as a revenue source in Washington.     

Awkward Class or Awkward Classes? Class relations in the Russian peasantry before collectivisation

This article develops some criticisms of Teodor Shanin's thesis concerning the class structure of the Russian peasantry up to the end of the 1920s. Rival Marxist approaches are then discussed, especially that of L. N. Kritsman and his school who saw the relations of production of the Russian peasantry as characterised by exploitative class relations between households and thus called into question all approaches asserting the social homogeneity of the peasantry as a class.