The Political Economy of the Removal Power

In the years leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, financial institutions targeted communities of color with expensive and risky subprime mortgage products. Hundreds of thousands of Black and Hispanic families were charged more for mortgages than their white counterparts or steered into expensive subprime loans, even though they qualified for cheaper prime loans. Over time, financial institutions like Countrywide pushed these toxic loans on more and more homeowners and expanded subprime lending throughout the country. When the music finally stopped in 2008, millions of families lost their jobs and their homes, and nearly $ii trillion in household wealth was wiped out. Over the next two years, Congress would work to pass financial reform legislation that was designed to address a variety of risks and dangers in the financial markets. In 2007, then-Professor Elizabeth Warren proposed a federal agency to regulate consumer financial products. For years, Warren had criticized predatory tricks and traps in mortgages, credit cards, and other financial products. One-off, piecemeal reforms had failed, and Americans were drowning in debt. Increasingly, one bad medical diagnosis or the loss of a job would mean bankruptcy and a family\u27s total economic devastation. Warren argued that other consumer products, like toasters, were regulated at the federal level. Financial products were not so different. By 2009, Congress and the President picked up Warren\u27s proposal, and they made it one of the central parts of the coming financial reform package

A 150-Year History of Mechanical Engineering at Lehigh

There was mechanical engineering education at Lehigh from the very beginning, but it has taken various forms over the first 150 years, as will be seen. This compilation was undertaken at the urging of Chairman Gary Harlow. Several faculty were kind enough to contribute reminiscences to the recent history, extending the material available from the “Brown and White” and Lehigh catalogs. There is no claim of comprehensive thoroughness. Whatever the sources offered that seemed interesting and contributed to a feeling of the flavor of life in the department was included. The arrangement is approximately chronological and the content tends toward gossip at times. I hope readers are kept interested and gain an appreciation of the significant role our department has played on campus from the very beginning, 150 years ago

El cálculo de estructuras en la obra de Carlos Fernández Casado

En este artículo se analizan las aportaciones de Carlos Fernández Casado al cálculo de estructuras. Tras exponer el contexto internacional, se describen sus contribuciones y su relación con la formación que recibió en la Escuela de Ingenieros de Caminos de Madrid. Se finaliza indicando algunos de los méritos más interesantes de su obra escrita. In the present paper the contributions of Carlos Fernández Casado to Structural Analysis are reviewed. After a description of the international context he was working in, his contributions and their relation to the academic training he received at the Civil Engineering Scholl in Madrid are described. Finally the most interesting aspects of his written work are commented

The Nobel Effect: Nobel Peace Prize Laureates as International Norm Entrepreneurs

For the first time in scholarly literature, this article traces the history of modern international law from the perspective of the constructivist theory of international relations. Constructivism is one of the leadings schools of thought in international relations today. This theory posits that state preferences emerge from social construction and that state interests are evolving rather than fixed. Constructivism further argues that international norms have a life cycle composed of three stages: norm emergence, norm acceptance (or norm cascades), and norm internalization. As such, constructivism treats international law as a dynamic process in which norm entrepreneurs interact with state actors to advance new norms with the objective of states adopting and ultimately internalizing those norms. Given the importance of this school of thought, it is surprising that scholars have yet to map the history of modern international law from the constructivist perspective. This article is the first part of a larger project that attempts to do just that, applying the constructivist theory of international relations to argue that Nobel Peace Prize Laureates have been profoundly instrumental as norm entrepreneurs in the emergence, cascading and internalization of international law norms. Examining the history of modern international law through a constructivist lens reveals that international law has had several distinct periods, each with its own particular narrative. The Pacifist Period (1901-1913) began with a vision of the abolition of war and the peaceful settlement of international disputes. The Statesman Period (1917-1938) built on that foundation with fragile institutions, imperfectly constructed to secure and maintain international peace and security. It also saw the emergence of more lasting international norms combating the unlawful use of force. The Humanitarian Period (1944-1959) established a more effective international architecture and crystallized international humanitarian norms regarding the use of force. The Human Rights Period (1960-1986) emphasized protection of the individual as one of the central pillars of international law. Finally, the Democracy Period (1987-Present) witnessed the triumph of democracy at the end of the Cold War, with widespread recognition that only the democratic form of government was suitable for realizing deeper yearnings of international peace and justice. international law, international relations, constructivism, Nobel Peace Prize, peace, pacificism, human rights, humanitarian, democracy, histor

What\u27s the New Deal with Marshall? Depression Relief and Higher Education

Employing archival research, this study examines the history of the New Deal’s influence on higher education, focusing on Marshall University, at the time Marshall College, from approximately 1932-1940. First, it analyzes the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) and National Youth Administration (NYA) student part-time employment program’s impact on the college. Second, it discusses the PWA’s (Public Works Administration) and WPA’s (Works Progress Administration) building programs’ and flood relief efforts’ effect on Marshall. Finally, this study explores the political implications of the New Deal with emphasis on state politics and financial problems and their relationship to Marshall. A study of Marshall College illuminates better understanding of the New Deal’s influence on American higher education in a rural and frequently impoverished area. This, in turn, will expand the knowledge of how federal government involvement affected state-run institutions of higher education. The experiences of Marshall College demonstrate that the New Deal greatly affected higher education in both helpful and problematic ways

El cálculo de estructuras en la obra de Carlos Fernández Casado

In the present paper the contributions of Carlos Fernández Casado to Structural Analysis are reviewed. After a description of the international context he was working in, his contributions and their relation to the academic training he received at the Civil Engineering Scholl in Madrid are described. Finally the most interesting aspects of his written work are commented.En este artículo se analizan las aportaciones de Carlos Fernández Casado al cálculo de estructuras. Tras exponer el contexto internacional, se describen sus contribuciones y su relación con la formación que recibió en la Escuela de Ingenieros de Caminos de Madrid. Se finaliza indicando algunos de los méritos más interesantes de su obra escrita

Punishment And Privilege: The Politics Of Class, Crime, And Corporations In America

As the global leader in incarceration, America locks up its own citizens at a rate that dwarfs that of any other developed nation. Yet while racial minorities and the urban poor fill American prisons and jails for street crimes, the state has historically struggled to consistently prosecute corporate crime. Why does the American state lock people up for street crimes at extraordinary rates but demonstrate such a limited capacity to prosecute corporate crime? While most scholarship analyzes these questions separately, juxtaposing these phenomena illuminates how the carceral state’s divergent treatments of street crime and corporate crime share common and self-reinforcing ideological and institutional origins. Analyzing intellectual history, policy debates, and institutional change relating to the politics of street crime and corporate crime from 1870 through today demonstrates how the class biases of contemporary crime policy emerged and took root during multiple junctures in U.S. history, including the Gilded Age, Progressive Era, New Deal, and post-war period. This reveals that political constructions of street criminals as pathological deviants and corporate criminals as honorable people driven to crime by market dynamics have consistently been rooted in common ideas about what causes and constitutes crime. By the 1960s, these developments embedded class inequalities into the criminal justice institutions that facilitated the carceral state’s rise while the regulatory state became the government’s primary means of controlling corporate crime. The historical development of mass incarceration, the corporate criminal law, and regulatory state should not be viewed as autonomous developmental threads, but as processes that have overlapped and intersected in ways that have reinforced politically constructed understandings about what counts as “crime” and who counts as a “criminal.

Interactive, Computation Assisted Design Tools

Realistic modeling, rendering, and animation of physical and virtual shapes have matured significantly over the last few decades. Yet, the creation and subsequent modeling of three-dimensional shapes remains a tedious task which requires not only artistic and creative talent, but also significant technical skill. The perfection witnessed in computer-generated feature films requires extensive manual processing and touch-ups. Every researcher working in graphics and related fields has likely experienced the difficulty of creating even a moderate-quality 3D model, whether based on a mental concept, a hand sketch, or inspirations from one or more photographs or existing 3D designs. This situation, frequently referred to as the content creation bottleneck, is arguably the major obstacle to making computer graphics as ubiquitous as it could be. Classical modeling techniques have primarily dealt with local or low-level geometric entities (e.g., points or triangles) and criteria (e.g., smoothness or detail preservation), lacking the freedom necessary to produce novel and creative content. A major unresolved challenge towards a new unhindered design paradigm is how to support the design process to create visually pleasing and yet functional objects by users who lack specialized skills and training. Most of the existing geometric modeling tools are intended either for use by experts (e.g., computer-aided design [CAD] systems) or for modeling objects whose visual aspects are the only consideration (e.g., computer graphics modeling systems). Furthermore, rapid prototyping, brought on by technological advances 3D printing has drastically altered production and consumption practices. These technologies empower individuals to design and produce original objects, customized according to their own needs. Thus, a new generation of design tools is needed to support both the creation of designs within the domain's constraints, that not only allows capturing the novice user's design intent but also meets the fabrication constraints such that the designs can be realized with minimal tweaking by experts. To fill this void, the premise of this thesis relies on the following two tenets: 1. users benefit from an interactive design environment that allows novice users to continuously explore a design space and immediately see the tradeoffs of their design choices. 2. the machine's processing power is used to assist and guide the user to maintain constraints imposed by the problem domain (e.g., fabrication/material constraints) as well as help the user in exploring feasible solutions close to their design intent. Finding the appropriate balance between interactive design tools and the computation needed for productive workflows is the problem addressed by this thesis. This thesis makes the following contributions: 1. We take a close look at thin shells--materials that have a thickness significantly smaller than other dimensions. Towards the goal of achieving interactive and controllable simulations we realize a particular geometric insight to develop an efficient bending model for the simulation of thin shells. Under isometric deformations (deformations that undergo little to no stretching), we can reduce the nonlinear bending energy into a cubic polynomial that has a linear Hessian. This linear Hessian can be further approximated with a constant one, providing significant speedups during simulation. We also build upon this simple bending model and show how orthotropic materials can be modeled and simulated efficiently. 2. We study the theory of Chebyshev nets--a geometric model of woven materials using a two-dimensional net composed of inextensible yarns. The theory of Chebyshev nets sheds some light on their limitations in globally covering a target surface. As it turns out, Chebyshev nets are a good geometric model for wire meshes, free-form surfaces composed of woven wires arranged in a regular grid. In the context of designing sculptures with wire mesh, we rely on the mathematical theory laid out by Hazzidakis~\cite{Hazzidakis1879} to determine an artistically driven workflow for approximately covering a target surface with a wire mesh, while globally maintaining material and fabrication constraints. This alleviates the user from worrying about feasibility and allows focus on design. 3. Finally, we present a practical design tool for the design and exploration of reconfigurables, defined as an object or collection of objects whose transformation between various states defines its functionality or aesthetic appeal (e.g., a mechanical assembly composed of interlocking pieces, a transforming folding bicycle, or a space-saving arrangement of apartment furniture). A novel space-time collision detection and response technique is presented that can be used to create an interactive workflow for managing and designing objects with various states. This work also considers a graph-based timeline during the design process instead of the traditional linear timeline and shows its many benefits as well as challenges for the design of reconfigurables

Building Political Will for Accountable, Equitable Trade Policy Making

Trade policy is at an inflection point. Even in the best of times, trade policy suffers from systemic dysfunction. International trade policy purports to offer broad benefits: economists find that trade increases economic output—or, in layman’s terms, “grows the pie.” Domestic economic policy is then supposed to redistribute those gains equitably. However, American trade policy consistently fails at this second step. Foreign competition has disrupted local labor markets, leading to greater job churn and lower lifetime income for lower-wage workers. The presumptive solution to this problem is Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA), a program to help workers who lose their jobs due to import competition. Yet Congress persistently underfunds TAA. The unsurprising result is a trade system unpopular among American workers

The Value of Value-Added: Science, Technology, and Policy in Educational Evaluation

In the first decade of the 21st century, researchers and policymakers in K-12 education began to focus on evaluating teacher and school performance based on students’ standardized test scores. One evaluative technique, value-added assessment (VAA), has been given particular attention. This research presents a comprehensive study of the theoretical, technical, historical and political dimensions VAA. Theoretically, the assumptions that underlie value-added diverge significantly from the observed operations of the schools and classrooms these models are supposed to evaluate. Technically, even if the theoretical assumptions are accepted, teachers’ actual value-added rankings are shown to be unstable across time periods and classrooms for individual teachers based on publicly-available data from New York City schools. Historical discourse analysis shows how the political and technical evolution of VAA fit a pattern common to prior technical innovations in educational assessment. Finally, making a case study of the Vergara v. California trial, this research demonstrates the political force of VAA data in spite of its known limitations. These findings are considered in the context of sociological theories of science and policy