When is garbage not garbage? A conference on cleaning, clearing, and reclaiming a dump site may seem an unlikely place for political scientists and scholars of international relations to pursue professional development, but the pursuit of knowledge knows no bounds—even if the smell can be hard on the nose itself! Observing such supposedly non-political sessions can quickly reveal that they are anything but, and discussions of how garbage is handled elsewhere can offer useful comparative insights as the local becomes global. Furthermore, few occasions provide such a useful context for developing one's critical thinking skills and recognizing the value of interdisciplinarity—an approach often touted as desirable in our profession.My thanks to John Chilton, Jeremy Bendik-Keymer, the members of the Dubai Natural History Group, and an anonymous reviewer for this journal for their feedback on earlier versions of this essay. I am also indebted to Hassan Tayim, Robert Cook, and the participants in the conference which prompted this article for their organizational efforts and inspiration.

I'm shaking hands with Bill Clinton, and about to turn him over to the coaches and players of the Rhodes College baseball team for handshakes of their own. The team has just spent two hours touring the museum part of the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock after defeating Hendrix College 6-0 in an afternoon game in nearby Conway. Bruce Lindsey, Clinton's right hand for the past 20-plus years and a Rhodes alum, graciously arranged the meet-and-greet at my ardent request.

APSA is pleased to recognize political science faculty members who received campus-wide and department awards for teaching excellence during the 2005–2006 academic year. APSA, Rowman Littlefield Publishers, and Pi Sigma Alpha, the national political science honor society, recognize award-winning faculty members each year at the Reception Honoring Teaching at the APSA Annual Meeting. Recognized faculty members receive a certificate noting their accomplishment and their awards are announced here and on the APSA web site.

If teaching is not the oldest profession, it certainly has a long historical pedigree. The frustrations teaching evokes likely have an equally long pedigree. One sees in Plato's Republic, for example, Socrates' frustration in trying to convey to Glaukon the aims of the educational scheme he is presenting to his interlocutors in Book 8. His evident difficulties relaying this information have doubtless struck sympathetic chords in the breasts of countless generations of teachers. Frustration has certainly been the case for the present authors, particularly in teaching the analysis and understanding of secondary commentary on classic texts; when reading such articles, students express puzzlement about the long debate over seemingly trivial points. Many come away from such classes convinced it is not worth investing time in understanding classic texts because the discussion of them centers on apparently arcane and obscure grammatical, historical, or technical questions. This essay presents an approach with which the authors have had some measure of success in helping students “see the point” of this especially difficult dimension of analyzing and understanding texts and authors. Our approach teaches students to identify and appreciate the “agenda argument” often put forward by such commentators. An “agenda argument” is a contemporary scholar's effort to address a current problem or issue through critical reflection on an iconic text or author in the field. The term “agenda” is appropriate because it clarifies that the scholar has an interest in an underlying general claim through discussion of the technical points being debated. In other words, the scholar has a larger agenda in mind that guides the selection of issues and determines the use of points in the text.

The roots of the political science discipline are intertwined with developing the skills required for democratic citizenship. Teaching and research efforts in this admirable tradition are still a prominent focal point of our academic tradition, as evidenced by the work of the APSA Task Force on Civic Education, reoccurring arguments about the most effective pedagogy for promoting participation, and works assessing the effects of civic education interventions. Moreover, this tradition has become increasingly relevant as political participation in the United States, especially among young people, continues to decline. Panel studies of college freshmen indicate that young people's participation in an array of political indicators—including thinking that keeping up with politics is important, discussing politics with friends, and acquiring political knowledge—have all declined by about half since the 1960s (Sax et al. 2003). Far more young people voted in 2004 than in the past, as turnout by 18–24 year-olds increased from 36% in 2000 to 42%, but younger citizens' appearance at the polls still lagged behind prior cohorts of young Americans, as well as their current elders (CIRCLE 2005). Educators and policy makers have come to the conclusion that intervention through formal civic education is necessary (Carnegie Corporation of New York and CIRCLE 2003; Galston 2003). Spurred on by works such as Educating Citizens (Colby, Ehrlich, Beaumont, and Stephens 2003) and Civic Responsibility in Higher Education (Ehrlich 2000), many colleges and universities have reinvigorated their mission of grooming students for civic leadership. Most of the skills identified as essential to such efforts could be labeled as deliberative communication skills. As the Colby et al. (2003) note:

All too often, women of color in higher education have headed the warnings of “publish or perish,” accentuating the centrality of research and publications to their academic careers. However, for the preponderance of women of color, this single-minded attention to research often obscures another aspect to their work that occupies more attention, demands greater time, and yields more satisfying results: teaching and service. For the majority of women of color who are not at research-centered universities, teaching and service occupy the greatest amount of time but can also carry the greatest risks.Previous iterations of this paper have benefited from the feedback and discussion among colleagues present at the 2006 APSA Teaching and Learning Conference and the 2005 APSA panel on Women of Color in the Classroom. In particular, I want to acknowledge the gracious insights of Janni Aragon, Jane Bayes, Cristina Beltran, Ange-Marie Hancock, Mary Hawkesworth, Julia Jordan-Zachery, Lily Ling, and many others who have shared their stores and struggles.

Many political science professors tell their students that the state is the institution with a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. Then we never mention force again. In particular, we do not mention the military again. Do our students absorb the basic facts about our military from other sources? Or, are they woefully ignorant on this issue? Try this quiz on them.

Listed below are movies that compliment chapters for Political Science/American Government textbooks. Please consider using these movies as extra credit or as midterm projects in your undergraduate courses. One assignment I have used is to have students prepare a paper summarizing the movie, including its plot and main characters, relate it to the corresponding textbook chapter (complete with citations to page numbers), and provide a conclusion that expresses the student's opinion about the movie.

People in Political Science.

Thomas Anton passed away on June 6, 2006, following a battle with cancer. Professor Anton was the A. Alfred Taubman Professor of Public Policy and American Institutions, professor of Political Science, and founding director of the Taubman Center for Public Policy at Brown University. He served as director of the Taubman Center from 1984 to 2000.

On Tuesday, June 20th, the department of political science learned of the death of Professor Gottfried Dietze, a member of the faculty at Johns Hopkins University since 1954. Dietze was born in 1922 in Homburg, Germany, and studied under Carl Friedrich at Harvard University and Alpheus Mason at Princeton University. His most widely read publication was The Federalist, originally published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 1960. Dietze died at his home in Washington, D.C.

Leon D. Epstein died on Tuesday, August 1, 2006, as the result of injuries suffered in a fall at home two days earlier. He was a scholar of international repute in the realm of political parties, a central figure in the postwar re-creation of the department of political science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, as well as a former president of the American Political Science Association and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.drawing on Bernard Cohen, Charles O. Jones, Frank Sorauf, John Witte, and Crawford Young

The following are excerpts from an address given at the Commemorative-Celebration Honoring John H. Herz The Graduate Center of the City University of New York March 15, 2006

On July 11, 2006, our distinguished colleague Ross M. Lence passed away. Ross had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in August of 2005, and even in his most difficult moments this last year, he continued to grace our lives with his good cheer and to engage in that activity he most loved, teaching.

Austin Ranney, the eminent political scientist and leading American authority on political parties and elections died, peacefully, at his home in Berkeley on July 24, 2006. He was 85 years old and for a number of years had been battling the debilitating effects of congestive heart failure and diabetes. Ranney's doctoral dissertation, The Doctrine of Responsible Party Government (1954), and his Jefferson Lectures at Berkeley, Curing the Mischiefs of Faction (1975), are major explorations of the role that parties play in the overall scheme of the American political system. The broad-gauged view adopted by these studies, theoretically informed but also rigorously disciplined by wide-ranging empirical study, was typical of Ranney's style of work, which extended to important contributions on democracy and the party system, referendums, presidential primaries, the measurement of party competition, the impact of television on elections, and the recruitment of candidates for public office, among other topics. His collaborators in some of these projects included Willmoore Kendall of Yale University and David Butler of the University of Oxford.

Paul Domenic Senese, associate professor of political science at the University at Buffalo, died on June 20, 2006, after a long and courageous battle with illness. He left this world as he had spent the last several years of his life, surrounded by his loving wife, Tracy Jarvis, his parents, his two sisters, his brother, and many other relatives. At a time when social scientists are reporting weakening bonds of friendship among Americans, Paul was clearly an outlier. St Joseph's University Church could hardly contain the large number of close friends, professional colleagues, and former students who attended his funeral mass.

Each year the executive director makes an annual report to the Council and membership, typically recounted in densely packed text in the fall issue of PS. It's always good reading to be sure, but rarely brings to life the vibrancy, breadth, and rich texture of APSA activities. This year we are trying something new, and have prepared a more tailored and graphical APSA Annual Report as a stand alone booklet. It is available to all members, and was first distributed at the APSA Annual Business Meeting in Philadelphia.

Washington Insider

Here's a preview of some of the articles that will be published in the January issue of PS: Political Science and Politics.

Recent census estimates place the percentage of Americans who are of Latino/Hispanic origin at more than 14%, up from 12.5% in the 2000 census. Despite comprising this large and increasing proportion of the population, Latinos continue to be severely underrepresented in the discipline. Today Latinos comprise fewer than 2% of all political scientists in the United States. This significant under-representation reflects the many barriers that continue to exist in terms of educational attainment among Latinos. In turn, our discipline is impacted by this trend as our ability to adequately assess the political incorporation and impact of this increasingly important minority population is seriously limited.