Congratulations from Debora Spar

For 125 years, Barnard College has been a place where young women pursue their educations and live their lives on their own terms. These students are poised to do great things in the future, but they are also hard at work, right here and right now, making a difference by making their voices heard

Radio and Television Regulation: Broadcast Technology in the United States, 1920 1960. By Hugh R. Slotten. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. Pp. xv, 308. $45.00.

At the turn of the twentieth century, successive waves of innovation began to redefine the fields of media and communication: the telegraph (invented in the middle of the nineteenth century and commonplace by the early twentieth), wireless telegraphy, AM radio, FM radio, and monochrome and then color television. Set against this backdrop of steady technological advance, the breakthroughs of recent years the Internet and mobile telephony for example are not really such breakthroughs after all, but merely the latest rounds of a patiently unfolding cycle.

As You Like It: Exploring the Limits of Parental Choice in Assisted Reproduction

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Markets: Continuity and Change in the International Diamond Market

The international diamond cartel, which presides over the production side of the industry, may be the most successful and longest-lasting cartel in the world. The dominant company in the industry, DeBeers, has been around since 1880 and has been controlled by a single South African family, the Oppenheimers, since 1925. Eight countries produce the bulk of the world's gem diamonds, and most of the producing entities within these countries conform to a set of rules. This conformity is the product of over a century of careful planning and negotiation, in which DeBeers has undertaken largely successful efforts to control the diamond trade and maximize its long-term prospects. The past decade has seen the end of apartheid in South Africa, the fall of communism in Russia, the opening of major mines in Canada, and the emergence of a worldwide movement against so-called "blood" or "conflict" diamonds. While, these developments have pummeled the diamond industry and forced its central players -- most notably DeBeers -- to change the nature of their trade, these changes have not affected the core dynamic of the global diamond market. It remains an industry dominated by a single firm and an industry in which, perhaps uniquely, all of the major players understand the extent to which their long-term livelihood depends on the fate and actions of the others.

Of Measurement and Mission: Accounting for Performance in Non-Governmental Organizations

In the last decades of the twentieth century, the world witnessed an unprecedented surge in the number and scope of non-governmental organizations ( NGOs )-formal, influence-minded groups unattached to any state. We see evidence of these NGOs scattered on our streets and our TV sets; in protests and relief activities; in solicitations and annual campaigns. While there are still those who dismiss NGO activity as a passing fad, most observers now realize that the NGOs are here and likely to stay. Certainly, the available statistics support this anecdotal impression. NGOs registered in the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development ( OECD ) countries rose from 1,600 in 1980 to 2,970 in 1993, and spending by these groups more than doubled during this time from $2.8 billion to$5.7 billion. By 1995, a United Nations report put the number of international NGOs at nearly 29,000; while the Economist estimated that there were 2 million of these groups in the United States alone by 2000. Similar growth rates are reported in the developing world: in Nepal, for example, the number of registered NGOs rose from 220 in 1990 to 1,210 in 1993; and in Kenya, a reported 240 NGOs are created every year. More critical than the numbers, however, is the influence that NGOs are beginning to exert over other, more established sectors of society. In the United States and European Union, for example, NGOs have become major conduits for development aid, accounting for 67 percent of the EU\u27s relief aid in 1994 and 5 percent of the OECD\u27s total aid budget between 1993 and 1994. In Bangladesh, Uganda, and elsewhere, they act in some instances like agents of the state, performing functions that were once reserved solely for local governments, such as education, health, and rural banking. And in the private sector, NGOs exert a strong and growing pull. Corporate giants such as Shell and Nike have altered their commercial practices in response to NGO critics, and hordes of less visible firms are paying new heed to the scruffy activists they once dismissed. In what may be seen as a watershed of non-governmental activity, the 1999 world trade talks in Seattle were effectively paralyzed by NGO protests, causing great embarrassment (and in some cases, significant financial loss) to the firms and states involved. [CONT