Suchergebnisse

AbstractThe democratic backsliding that has accelerated across the globe over the past decade has included a rollback of liberal arts and sciences (LAS) as a system of university education. This essay explores the origins and goals of the global LAS education reform movement. I argue that while the movement is under threat largely due to its principled value of educating democratic citizens, it still has powerful potential and global impact; in part because LAS education is primarily an indigenous phenomenon adapting to local circumstances. I also argue that U.S. universities could contribute more constructively to the movement if they conceived of their role as global civic actors that conduct themselves in the spirit of mutuality and reciprocity, not as multinational corporations that channel neoliberal tendencies to maximize revenue. U.S. critics of the global LAS movement should also pay heed to the United States' own history. Specifically, they can learn from historically Black colleges and universities how, operating under the extreme authoritarianism of the Jim Crow era, they managed to produce leaders who shaped a more democratic country. Liberal arts education produces short term benefits for students and alumni, but in the democratic context it is a long-term wager.

This article seeks to answer two interrelated questions: where does press freedom stand in Russia more than 15 years after Mikhail Gorbachev's policy glasnost began? and, what does Russia's media transformation tell us about our understanding of mass political media systems? It is argued that while the Russian media are suffering under the presidency of Vladimir Putin, circumstances are in no way as dire as in the pre-Gorbachev Soviet period, nor even as bad as some journalists' rights organizations would have it. By using comparative analysis, and incorporating political science literature that offers typologies of non-democratic systems of governance, the article demonstrates that contemporary Russian media find much in common with authoritarian regimes across the world and are not sui generis as some have argued. In the process, the author attempts to resurrect some of the important distinctions made in Siebert et al.'s much maligned Four Theories of the Press, particularly the role of the state as the leading threat to media freedom. The author also argues for the need to distinguish more clearly between different types of non-democratic mass political media systems.

This article examines changes in the depiction of the United States in Soviet political cartoons from April 1985 through August 1990. It seeks to demonstrate that both qualitative and quantitative changes in the image of the United States were integrally related to changes in U.S./Soviet relations. Changes in the Soviet press were more a product of policy choices of the party and government than of press freedom associated with the policy of glasnost.