Professor of Anthropology Catherine Lutz, co-author of a 1995 study called “Making Soldiers in the Public Schools,” comments on the Defense Department’s assertion that Junior ROTC is not a recruitment tool.

An opinion piece by Benjamin Defensor that explores Filipino literature uses as its jumping-off point an anthology of essays compiled by Professor of English Ellen Rooney that "demonstrate feminist critical principles at work in analyzing texts, while others take a step back to trace the development of a particular feminist literary method." An essay by Professor of Nancy Armstrong, "What Feminism Did to Novel Studies," also is noted.

Xu Wenli, founder of the Chinese Democratic Party and a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies, discusses recent actions of the Chinese Communists Party in this interview for New York-based newspaper and Web site that covers China.

A study conducted by Assistant Professor of Economics Lily Qiu looked at mergers that added value and those that destroyed it from 1992 to 1999 and examined ownership of the firm in each case. She controlled for factors such as company size. She found that public pension funds were more likely to be owners of companies that did value adding mergers and less likely to own those that destroyed value. Conversely, mutual funds were more likely to own companies that destroyed value. In fact of all the types of owners including banks, insurance companies, independent advisers, and pension funds, mutual funds were the worst owners as measured by value destroying mergers.

“The Meanings of Macho,” a groundbreaking 1996 study of male gender identity in a Mexico City neighborhood conducted by Associate Professor of Anthropology Matthew Gutmann, has been reissued, with a new introduction by Gutmann.

Professor of Political Science Darrell West, author of "Air Wars: Television Advertising in Election Campaigns," comments on the televised ads used by Maryland Senate candidate Michael Steele: "Most ads today are tightly scripted,” he said. “Tthis has the aura of spontaneity. I'm sure it's very scripted, but it looks unscripted."

Years ago, high school electives meant home economics and shop, Spanish or French. Now, high schools offer choices that range from Mandarin to forensics and sports management. "As long as they are serious courses that are teaching important topics,” such electives are “not incompatible with standards and more rigor," said Senior Lecturer in Education Larry Wakeford. "You can take any set of science standards or language arts standards" and incorporate them into the elective class, he said. A Wakeford colleague, Senior Lecturer in Education Bil Johnson, disagrees. He said most topics taught in what he calls "boutique" electives can be incorporated into a more rigorous core subject like forensics in history. But that does require teachers to have some freedom within their curriculum, he said.

This feature article takes a look at the three-decade role Brown University’s Department of Geological Sciences has played in the exploration of Mars, and focuses primarily on the work of Assistant Professor Michael Wyatt, who works with robotic rovers digging and drilling into the planet’s surface.

“Talk to America” is the VOA’s first daily international call-in show. Today’s topic is the use of economic sanctions as a foreign policy tool. Susan Eckert, a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies, is on the three-person panel responding to callers’ questions.