CPPA Director M.V. Lee Badgett (Economics and CPPA), an expert on the economic characteristics of same-sex couples, played a pivotal role the California court's decision to allow same-sex marriage. Not only did she serve as an expert witness in the case, she also co-authored an amicus brief in support of gay marriage that was used numerous times in the California Supreme Court chief justice's oral arguments on the economic characteristics of same-sex couples. "When you compare same-sex couples with kids to different-sex married couples with kids, they look very similar in financial terms and in terms of having a stay-at-home parent. The court's decision picked up on this general point, noting that same-sex couples with kids have the same need for access to marriage that different-sex couples with kids would have."

To read more, please visit the SBS website.

To read Prof. Badgett's comments in a story in the LA Times, please click here.

The 'Toxic 100' database, created by Michael Ash (Economics and CPPA) and James Boyce (Economics), ranks the country's air-polluting corporations by the impact their waste products have on humans. According to Prof. Ash, the work seeks to give shareholders, activists, environmentalists and business owners a tool to measure how much pollution is getting into the air - and to make appropriate changes. While the hard data used to create the Toxic 100 is available to the public through the EPA's Toxics Release Inventory, Ash said the information can be overwhelming and hard to gauge. 'We turn the right-to-know laws into something much closer to useful information,' said Ash. 'Our aim is to draw attention to our release regulations and generate a consumer discussion.'

To read a recent article featured in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, please click here.

To read the press release, please click here.

Second year students will be presenting their capstone projects on Thursday, May 15 and Friday, May 16 in Thompson Hall 620. Please join us to hear about their projects, which provide insight into a wide range of policy topics.

To view the schedule, please click here.

Ray La Raja (Political Science) lent his expertise on campaign financing on April 20th in an article entitled "Financing decision looms for Obama." Obama previously claimed he would accept public financing - and the spending limits associated with it - if he won the nomination. However, some past candidates claim that accepting public funds for campaigning was a mistake due to the strict spending limitations. According to La Raja, "I think Obama is very nervous. He watched what happened to Kerry last time. . . . I think Obama recognizes this primary campaign has exposed his vulnerabilities and these conservative groups can figure out targeted messages against him."

To read the article, please click here.

Krista Harper presented her paper, "Across the Bridge: Using PhotoVoice to Investigate Environment and Health in a Hungarian Romani (Gypsy) Community," at the Society for Applied Anthropology meetings in Memphis, TN, on March 28, 2008. Her presentation was part of the panel, "Visualizing Change: Emergent Technologies in Social Justice Inquiry and Action," a two-part session organized by Harper and Aline Gubrium (Public Health, UMass). Harper teaches CPPA's course, "Qualitative Research Methods for Public Policy and Administration" and established the new "PhotoVoice Research Lab" as a resource for policy-oriented research and teaching.

Mari Castañeda (Communication) has been appointed the faculty advisor to Student Bridges, a UMass program that aims to increase college access and success for underrepresented students. The program primarily partners with schools and other programs in the Holyoke-Springfield area, and offers UMass students the opportunity to use their talents to coordinate youth-centered events, college preparatory workshops and campus visits for local schools and programs.

Professor Nancy Folbre (Economics) focuses much of her research on the social organization of care, and coordinates efforts to build a network for research on these issues through her blog, "Care Talk." As a Family Research Scholar with the Center for Research on Families, Folbre has connected a group of interested faculty at UMass Amherst and connected with a larger statewide group to form a Massachusetts Care Policy network.

Folbre was recently asked by the journal Science to contribute to their "Perspectives" by offering a brief summary of research on an important topic. Focusing on the impact of personal interactions and emotional connections on the economics of care services, she created a piece entitled "When a Commodity is Not a Commodity," which can be found here.

On March 26th, CPPA hosted Professor Agnes Mwang'ombe from the University of Nairobi in Kenya. Her talk focused on the agriculture, sustainability and arid lands challenges facing rural women in Kenya. Professor Mwang’ombe is Principal of the College of Agriculture and Veterinary Sciences, University of Nairobi, Kenya. She is the Founder and Director of the Arid and Semi Arid Lands Foundation, a Kenya-based NGO. She has a Ph.D. in Plant Pathology from the University of London and conducts research on plant resistance to diseases, pathogens specialization, seed borne pathogens and diseases. She is an expert in agricultural sustainability in arid lands and the impact on climate change. Her work also integrates gender issues in agricultural and education activities.

Professor Agnes Mwang’ombe’s talk is part of the Center for Public Policy and Administration’s Distinguished Lecture Series and is co-sponsored with the UMASS Dept. of Anthropology and the Political Economy Research Institute. For more information, please click here.