Suchergebnisse

The text of an analysis on Burundi presented by Mr. René Lemarchand on September 22, 1988 before the Africa Subcommittee of the United States House of Representatives was published in the 1989 winter number of ISSUE. As noted, more precise research has been published since this date on the Ntega and Marangara events by people who actually went to "revisit" the country, which is not the case of Mr. Lemarchand, since his last visit to Bujumbura was in autumn 1973.

'Social-science research has been transformed over the last generation by the advent and expansion of the general social surveys (GSS). The GSS model of research has created a infrastructure for the social sciences designed to address the interests and research agenda of scholars and their students; cover a wide range of topics; utilize reliable, valid, and generalizable measurement; and provide data both across nations and across time. This design in turn has generated widespread analysis and notably contributed to our understanding of social processes and societal change.' (author's abstract)|

Canadian universities have not been as enterprising as their American neighbours in seeking out new ways of serving the community; but they have deviated far enough from the straight and narrow path of academic scholarship to develop a sense of guilt for which atonement may be offered by devoting a part of their resources to the promotion of graduate studies.In the United States we find a desperate effort being made to save the M.A. degree from the fate which has befallen the B.A. degree, by applying truly heroic remedies, such as insistence on serious qualifications for admission to candidacy, on "graduate standards of attainment," on "proper use of spoken and written English," on "a reading knowledge of at least one foreign language … as indispensable background and not merely as a tool for research." A candidate should have obtained "an average grade which places him in at least the first third of his class" and "due attention should be paid to those qualities known as personality and, in particular, to moral character."A sense of guilt may be a very potent force, but it requires rationalization. Various reasons have been assigned for promoting graduate studies in Canada. Professor Brebner contends that an increased output of scholars, retained in Canada, could be employed in "the creation of Canadian culture." In so doing they would solve what Professor Brebner considers ought to be "the most urgent problem for Canadian post-war planners," namely "how to make Canada so cordial and attractive a place" that Canadians "who excel in any field" will be content to live and work there. It is nearly fifty years since American universities set about the task of meeting "needs for the satisfaction of which approximately 300 out of a total of some 500 advanced students at the time considered it necessary to go abroad." Canadians have continued to pursue graduate studies in other countries, but it is possible to argue that young Canadians cannot rely as much as in the past on the opportunities offered for advanced work at British and American universities.

A general cycle of relations between the Department of Defense (DoD) and the university is described with particular reference to the social sciences and international studies: a general decline in amity since World War II, decreased support for DoD objectives, a concern for the effect of DoD priorities on the general research profile, the growth of in-house and nonacademic vendors in research and training, and the enclaving of the military-connected research community within the university. The pattern of DoD support for strategic studies, linguistics, and language and area studies is examined.