MGS in the News
PLEASE NOTE: Many of the links below go to external news sites. Over time, some will expire.
Listen to Veteran Peacemakers O'Malley, Maharaj on Iraq
www.NPR.org (May 12, 2008)
Political activist Mac Maharaj fought apartheid with Nelson Mandela, and spent four months in the South African prison on Robben Island.
Padraig O'Malley is a veteran peace negotiator who wrote a book about Maharaj, and who worked to help settle the conflicts in both South Africa and Northern Ireland.
Padraig O'Malley - The John Joseph Moakley Chair of Peace and Reconciliation
will lecture at the John F. Kennedy Library & Museum
on Thursday May 8, 2008 at 6:00 PM.
The topic will be:
The Helsinki Talks: A Step Forward for Iraq or More Time Outs?
For more information & Directions Click Here...
Boston.com chat with Padraig O'Malley, UMass specialist on divided societies, about Iraq strife
Boston.com (May 2, 2008)
Padraig_O_Malley: Hello, this is Padraig O'Malley, and I'll be chatting about the recent efforts to further the peace process in Iraq by using the chief negotiators from Northern Ireland and South Africa as facilitators, sharing with key Iraqi leaders how they were able to bring their own countries out of violence into stable and peaceful democracies.
Additional Coverage: Boston Globe April 28, 2008
"Progress has been made," Padraig O'Malley, the UMass-Boston professor and veteran peace activist who organized the meeting, said in a phone interview from the Finnish capital.
O'Malley said the participants agreed upon all but three of 16 broad principles, which he hopes the Iraqi Parliament will eventually endorse, laying the framework for negotiations to reconcile Iraq's warring parties and militias. He said the participants hoped that that their talks would lead to a detailed agreement on core issues that have plagued Iraq, including disarming militias associated with political parties, protecting the rights of minorities, and reducing corruption in government.
Boston Globe (April 25, 2008)
Professor of peace and reconciliation in the McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies Padraig O'Malley is profiled by the Boston Globe.
Excerpt: Padraig O'Malley, the irrepressible academic, author, and peacemaker, has put together an extraordinary guest list for the trip from Iraq to Helsinki: 36 Iraqi leaders from across the country's sectarian divide - Sunni, Shia, and Kurd. They are set to spend the next three days talking, in heavily guarded privacy, about how to bring peace, or at least the possibility of political reconciliation, to a nation at war with itself.
It is the second such gathering of Iraqis O'Malley has organized as he takes on the bloody deadlock in that country, just as he previously forged an unlikely dialogue between adamant enemies in Northern Ireland and South Africa. And he has high hopes for the weekend sessions, which will take place at an undisclosed location in Finland's capital.
Record Gas Prices Add Pressure to Already Squeezed Consumers
Center for American Progress (April 22, 2008)
Professor in the Department of Public Policy and Public Affairs Christian E. Weller writes that prices at the pump have now soared to $3.51 per gallon for regular gasoline, according to the Energy Information Administration, easily shattering an inflation-adjusted record that has stood since March 1981. As gasoline prices rise quickly, consumers’ spending is further squeezed, driving them deeper into debt. Yet consumer credit is not as readily available as it used to be; consumers will eventually have to cut spending on other consumption items. When this happens, already weak retail sales growth will further decrease, and the economy will find itself in a deeper rut than it is right now since consumer spending makes up more than two-thirds of the economy…
Boston Globe (April 22, 2008)
A new health-reporting service designed to reach immigrants and non-English speakers was launched Friday by the University of Massachusetts, Boston. The New England Ethnic Newswire will be free for ethnic media outlets in New England. Plans call for stories to be translated into English, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, or Haitian Creole. Its goal is to transmit health information to underserved populations, according to UMass.
New York Times (April 20, 2008)
Professor in the gerontology institute Francis Caro is mentioned in a story that talks about the issues that individuals encounter after retiring from the work force. Caro’s advocacy for greater opportunities for older people in the work force might have started what critics warned it might — changed expectations about how long people nearing or passing retirement age should remain traditionally productive. In retirement years, Mr. Caro said, it would become “less acceptable to say, ‘Hey, I’m having a good time doing my own thing.’ ”
Boston Globe Op-Ed by David Sparks April 19, 2008
MGS Asst. to the Dean, A Gamble for the Superdelegates
DEMOCRATS are casting about, trying to find the scoring system that ends their nominating process before their convention with the fewest bad feelings. A variety of solutions has been floated: delegate counts, states won, popular vote, and national polls. Read More...
The Boston Globe Editorial - July 2, 2007
Homelessness: What Works
THE THREAT of homelessness hangs over many heads. Nearly 5 percent of households nationally have "worst case housing needs." That means they pay more than 50 percent of their income for housing, have no housing assistance, and have low incomes, according to a new report from the Boston Foundation and the McCormack Graduate School at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. Read more...
The Boston Herald - June 26, 2007
Biz takes on diversity - by Jay Fitzgerald
The subcommittees will examine ways to measure progress on hirings, establish "grassroots initiatives" to make Boston more attractive to miniorities and create a "clearinghouse" of general ideas on the topic, said Stephen Crosby, dean of the University of Massachusetts-Boston's McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies, which is spearheading the effort. Read more...
International Herald Tribune - June 13, 2007
Book Review: Shades of Difference - by Jeremy Harding
"Mac" Maharaj spent nearly 40 years as an anti-apartheid activist. "Shades of Difference," by Padraig O'Malley is a collaborative biography, bringing together the author's analysis and Maharaj's own reflections, transcribed from hours of interviews. The result is exactly what O'Malley set out to achieve: "a portrait of Mac and of South Africa." It is a striking success. Read more...
7NEWS - New England News - Monday, June 11, 2007
Commission - perhaps - endorses part of Patrick business-tax plan
BOSTON -- A new report ostensibly written by a special commission studying the state's business tax structure recommends legislators immediately adopt a key element of Gov. Deval Patrick's proposed tax overhaul, but at least two panelists say commission members were uninvolved in drafting the findings. Read more...
The Boston Globe Op-ed - June 1, 2007
A passport to higher ed - by Steve Crosby
THIS MORNING, 1,800 undergraduates at the University of Massachusetts at Boston will receive their diplomas and join the ranks of the 85 percent of UMass grads who stay in the state, providing much of the critical workforce for the Commonwealth's future. Read more...
The University Reporter - May, 2007
UMass Boston Adds the John Joseph Moakley Chair of Peace and Reconciliation to endowed Professorships - by Ed Hayward
The list of endowed profes-sorships and chairs at the Uni-versity of Massachusetts Boston also includes the John Joseph Moakley Chair of Peace and Reconciliation, a distinguished professorship within the John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies. Read more...
Center for Social Policy, Press Release - May 14, 2007
New England Homeless Management Information Systems (HMIS) Practitioners Convene at UMass Boston for Regional Conference - by John McGah
Over 28,000 people are homeless in New England on a given day, according to a presentation at the third annual HUD New England Regional HMIS Conference — Making the Data Count." Read more...
The Boston Globe Editorial — May 11, 2007
Vision for a diverse Boston
Most recent is a survey from the McCormack School at UMass-Boston indicates that the number of minorities on boards of directors in Massachusetts -- both corporate and nonprofit -- is dismally low. The figures are a reliable indicator, according to Dr. Carol Hardy-Fanta, director of the School's Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy, which conducted the survey, as data were compiled from a majority of the relevant organizations. Read more...
The Boston Globe — May 11, 2007
Diversity still lagging in Bay State boardrooms - by Yvonne Abraham, Globe Staff
The boards of directors of the Bay State's largest corporations, hospitals, universities, and cultural institutions are overwhelmingly composed of white men, according to a report to be released today by the McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies at University of Massachusetts, Boston. Read more...
The Boston Globe Op-Ed — March 27, 2007
Paisley's Politics Pays Off - by Padraig O'Malley
Padraig O'Malley, John Joseph Moakley Distinguished Professor of Peace and Reconciliation, authored an op-ed on recent political developments in Northern Ireland Read more...
The Boston Globe Op-Ed — October 6, 2006
Can you figure out the budget? - by Steve Crosby and Noah Berger
Each year, the state budget allocates over $25 billion -- $4,000 for every man, woman, and child in the Commonwealth -- to services such as education, public safety, roads, public health, and environmental protection. Yet that budget is often inscrutable to all but the most sophisticated reader Read more...
The Boston Globe Op-Ed — July 8, 2006
An honest debate on immigration - by Steve Crosby
THERE ARE two simple reasons why there are millions of undocumented immigrants in the United States. First, they want to improve their lives and the lives of their families. Second, there are hundreds of thousand of individuals and companies who are happy to employ them. If there were no jobs, there would be no immigrants. Read more...