The Urban Policy certificate will emphasize the social, economic and political dimensions of urban problems and prepare School graduate students for careers in urban policy analysis and development in international agencies, national, state and local governments, non-profit organizations and think tanks. Its scholarly foundation is based on the strengths of three disciplines represented in the School: Sociology, Politics, and Economics.

The Urban Policy and Planning certificate will build on this scholarly foundation and also incorporate a focus on the physical planning and design dimensions of urban policy. For the planning dimension of this certificate, the School will draw on the expertise of eminent urban planners and practitioners, in addition to scholars associated with the Schools of Engineering and Architecture.

With the incorporation of these two certificates into the M.P.A. program beginning in Fall 2006, the School will phase out the joint M.P.A.-U.R.P. degree by the end of the 2007-08 academic year. Until that time, interested students will have the option of pursuing either one of the Urban Policy certificates, or the joint M.P.A.-U.R.P. degree.

These new certificates emerged from a significant review of the existing program by a Committee on Urban Studies chaired by the School's Douglas Massey in the 2004-05 academic year.

Two core courses will be offered for the Urban Policy certificate: WWS 537, The Social Organization of Cities, and WWS 540, Urbanization and Development. For the planning component, students will be required to take two additional core courses: WWS 533, Planning Theory and Process, and WWS 535, Planning Methods. All students will also have to complete a Graduate Policy Workshop that has been designated as "Urban Policy" and certain elective courses, both technical and topical; three for the UP certificate and two for the UPP certificate.

More information about the School's graduate programs is available online.

A career prosecutor, prior to his current position Rabner was a prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's office under Christopher Christie, and headed the office's criminal division in Newark, NJ. He has twice received the Director's Award for Superior Performance.

"Stuart's an outstanding public servant and carries the weight of a bright New Jersey future on his shoulders," Governor Corzine said in statement. "In the often clouded and failed ethical context of public life, Stuart Rabner sets a very high standard and promises a better day for New Jersey and the public's confidence in government."

Senate President and former acting New Jersey governor Richard Codey stated, "There are very few people that can match the experience and character of Stuart Rabner."

Rabner graduated from the Woodrow Wilson School in 1982 and went on to earn his law degree from Harvard Law School.

Bass notes how some analysts have already considered the prospects for partitioning or dividing Iraq, and considers historical precedent for partition. Yet, Bass writes, "Surveying the literature of past experiments in partition reveals that the closer one looks, the messier the outcome gets."

A basic problem with partition, Bass observes, "is that it's excruciatingly hard to draw a neat line to divide groups." Though "at first glance," Bass writes, "the idea of separation seems appealing: If they can't live together, let them live apart."

While partition theorists "think that groups can never be made to live together again after ethnic war," Bass explains, he points out that critics of partition "see separation as a kind of ethnic cleansing with a human face." Bass further notes that the promise of statehood by the international community via "the creation of ethnic statelets gives an international seal of approval to the ethnic nationalists," may send an alarming signal to those who see "statehood as a reward for a particularly bloody ethnic war."

"With all this to consider," Bass concludes, "it's no wonder that even partition's stoutest supporters see it as a last-ditch option. If Iraq is partitioned, it probably will be only after the United States experiences the same kind of panicky desperation that helped prompt Britain's mid-century partitions in its crumbling imperial possessions."

While most people would report believing that thoughts alone cannot cause external events, in these experiments people claimed responsibility for events that they had only willed to occur. For example, one experiment gauged whether people thought they had harmed another person when they stuck pins in a voodoo doll named after that person. Subjects in the experiment did believe in the power of their voodoo hexes, but only if they had first generated evil thoughts about their victim.

The researchers have written an article about the experiments, titled "Everyday Magical Powers: The Role of Apparent Mental Causation in the Overestimation of Personal Influence," which will appear in the forthcoming Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and was co-authored by Emily Pronin, Assistant Professor of Pychology and Public Affairs at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School, Sylvia Rodriguez '06, and Daniel Wegner and Kimberly McCarthy of Harvard University. The experiments reveal erroneous magical thinking even among ordinary people.

For the voodoo experiment, subjects were led to think evil thoughts about another person who they believed was also a subject in the experiment (but who actually worked for the researchers). In a control condition, they were not led to think such thoughts. Each subject then stuck pins in a voodoo doll representing the alleged victim, who was seated at the table across from them. When the "victim" then faked having a headache, those who had harbored evil thoughts were more likely than their peers in a control condition to believe they had caused it.

In addition to experiments with voodoo hexes, the researchers also studied fans watching sports. In one study, subjects watched as a basketball player shot baskets. Spectators were more likely to perceive that they had caused his success if they had first been asked to visualize his success ("Imagine the ball falling through the hoop"). In another experiment conducted at a live basketball game (Princeton vs. Harvard), some spectators were given a task before the start of the game to think about it by reviewing the potential of the starting players. Other audience members were not given this assignment. At halftime, those who had thought about the players' performance reported personally having had more of an impact on the game than those in the control condition. In another study, people watching the NFL Super Bowl on television felt more responsible for that game's outcome the more they thought about the game while watching.

This belief in magical powers may explain why individuals sometimes feel it is so important to "support our team." Just by rooting, people feel they can help their team win, even if they just jump up and down in front of a television, for example. Individuals' beliefs in magical powers might also explain why, if a person has to step away from a television during an important game, they would rather not have someone who will cheer for the other team stay and watch in their absence.

The researchers found that people subscribe to magical beliefs despite the fact that these beliefs defy any rational scientific analysis. The feeling of mental power arises because people perceive an association between their thoughts about an external event and the occurrence of that event.

Pronin and her co-authors noted, "This research suggests that magical beliefs are commonplace and that a bit of magical thinking appears even in ordinary people and circumstances."

Carles Boix will join the faculty as Professor of Politics and Public Affairs. Boix was most recently Associate Professor in Political Science at the University of Chicago. His primary fields of interest are democratic stability and political institutions; state formation and violence; political economy of inequality; and international political economy. Boix’s current research projects include the formation of the system of political and partisan representation in democratic regimes; war and the emergence of states; and the foundation of power and authoritarianism.

Marc Melitz joins the School as an Associate Professor of Economics and Public Affairs. Melitz's research interests are in international trade and investment. His recent research endeavors include firm-level responses to globalization, and trade and macroeconomic dynamics. Melitz previously served at the John and Ruth Hazel Associate Professor of the Social Sciences in the Economics Department at Harvard University.

Emilie Hafner-Burton joins the faculty from Oxford University, where she was Postdoctoral Research Prize Fellow, Nuffield College, and Senior Associate, Global Economic Governance Programme. She is also an Associated Fellow of the Stanford University Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. She writes and teaches on international organization, international political economy, the global governance of gender, social network analysis, design and selection of international regimes, international human rights law and policy, war and economic sanctions, non-proliferation policy, and quantitative and qualitative research design.

Richard Erdman, recently U.S. ambassador to Algeria and Special Envoy/Chairman of the Israel Lebanon Monitoring Group, will join WWS in January 2007 as a Diplomat-in-Residence. Erdman is a career Foreign Service Officer with 34 years of experience with the State Department in postings in Washington, D.C. and abroad. His research interests include international peacemaking and peacekeeping, the Middle East and North Africa. He earned his M.A. at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies.

The study reveals that outsourcing U.S. jobs overseas yields higher wages at home, especially regarding America's economic relations with lower-wage countries like China. By outsourcing some production overseas, U.S. companies lower costs and increase productivity, thus allowing them to expand operations and offer domestic workers higher wages. As such, "Things are not as bad for low-skilled workers as one might have expected," Grossman told conference attendees.

Former Woodrow Wilson School economics professor and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke addressed the conference for the first time since succeeding Alan Greenspan as chair, where he warned that an unprecedented pace of global economic integration may be constrained by protectionism and terrorism.

An official White House statement noted that McCormick will help set "policies that protect national security and promote trade at the same time."

Previously, he served as the president of Ariba, Inc. and as president and CEO of FreeMarkets, Inc. Earlier in his career, he served as a consultant for McKinsey & Company.

Dr. McCormick earned his bachelor's degree from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and his M.P.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the Woodrow Wilson School.

Bass writes, "A rallying point for revisionists, the shrine includes a newly renovated museum that showcases a fiercely nationalist version of Japanese military history — one that glosses over Imperial Japan’s invasion of Manchuria and skates past its brutal slaughter in Nanjing without mentioning the massacre of Chinese civilians. Small wonder that Japan’s neighbors react with revulsion and fury when Mr. Koizumi visits the shrine."

Koizumi, who is in his final months in office, "has one last chance to serve his country," Bass asserts. "He should make a point of skipping a final visit to Yasukuni and push instead for a new national memorial to Japan's war dead, or for the removal of Class A war criminals from the shrine's rolls."

"Doing so would remove a key piece of ammunition from the arsenal of Japan's rivals," Bass writes, especially China, which uses "the Nanjing massacre to distract their public away from present-day communist corruption and misrule."

Koizumi's visits to the shrine have also angered other democracies, Bass observes, including South Korea. Yet while Koizumi "prides himself on his close relationship with President Bush, [Koizumi] has gambled that Japan can afford to alienate much of Asia so long as its ties to America remain strong, [but] the shrine is almost as obnoxious to American sensibilities as it is to Chinese or Korean ones."

Ultimately, Bass notes, Koizumi has one "last chance to be remembered as a statesman" before his terms runs out.

In the article Edwards addresses the upcoming November elections and decries the current U.S. Congress that in his estimation has failed to exercise its responsibility as mandated by the U.S. Constitution, to govern as a separate branch of the federal government and ensure that all "checks and balances" of presidential authority remain intact.

Edwards writes, "In a parliamentary system, power rests with the executive, and the legislative majority functions in a supporting role. But the U.S. Congress is intended not to be a rubber stamp but a check on presidential power and the principal architect of national priorities. Yet when President Bush thumbs his nose at Congress — declaring his authority to disregard legislation, permitting agency officials to lie to Congress and to walk out of hearings, ignoring clear statutory requirements — members of Congress mumble and pout and do nothing."

Equally disturbing, the author argues, is the "bitter polarization" between parties that is "partisanship carried to an extreme."

Edwards notes, "Candidates for the House and Senate will be making urgent appeals to the voters for the next two-plus months. During that time, citizens can make a few appeals of their own. One is for a Congress that recognizes its responsibilities and takes them seriously. And if they do not get satisfactory assurances, citizens can withhold their votes. Complaining is not enough; it is time for voters to demand a Congress that does its job."

William Branson, a Woodrow Wilson School professor emeritus who was a pioneer in the field of international economics, died Tuesday, Aug. 15, in Princeton from complications from throat cancer. He was 68.

Branson, who joined the faculty in 1967, was the John Foster Dulles Professor Emeritus in International Affairs and professor emeritus of economics and international affairs. He taught undergraduate and graduate classes in macroeconomic theory and policy, international finance and trade, and economic development. His research focused primarily on foreign exchange markets and the macroeconomic problems facing developing and transition economies.

"With Dale Henderson, he developed the 'portfolio balance' approach to exchange rate determination, an approach that emphasizes changes in the relative supplies of assets denominated in different currencies as a fundamental cause of exchange rate movements," said Gene Grossman, the Jacob Viner Professor of International Economics at WWS and director of the International Economics Section at Princeton.

"Bill was a longtime consultant to the World Bank and other international institutions, where he lent sage advice on macroeconomic policy and financial structure to many developing countries," he said. "Many students will remember him for his widely used textbook, 'Macroeconomic Theory and Policy.' Colleagues will remember his broad interests in international economics and his fine leadership of the international studies group at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a role that he capably filled for 15 years."

Branson was born on Feb. 14, 1938, in Springfield, Ill. A 1959 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, he served as a supply officer in the Navy for five years while pursuing graduate studies at the University of California-Berkeley, where he earned his M.A. in 1964. He received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1967.

After two years on the Princeton faculty, Branson spent a year on leave as a senior staff economist with the President's Council of Economic Advisers. He began serving as a consultant to the World Bank in 1981, working on stabilization and structural adjustment programs in Indonesia, Kenya, Turkey, Yugoslavia and Portugal.

He also was a consultant with the International Monetary Fund, the U.S. Federal Reserve Board, the U.S. Treasury Department and the international Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. He was director of research in international studies and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research from 1978 to 1993. In addition he was a visiting professor at institutions in Sweden, Austria, France, Greece and Italy.

The author of numerous articles for professional journals, Branson first published "Macroeconomic Theory and Policy" in 1972. It was translated into several other languages and published in two more editions. His book "Macroeconomics" (co-written with James Litvack) was published in 1976.

Branson, who became a full professor at Princeton in 1972, was named the Jacob Viner Professor of International Economics in 1988 and to the Dulles professorship in 1992. He transferred to emeritus status in 2000.

Branson is survived by his children Kristin, William and Emily Branson, and Ekaterina Zamyshlyaeva; and by his granddaughter Morgan Branson Lynch.

A memorial service is being planned at the University in the fall. The date of the service and the recipient charity of memorial contributions will be announced within a week. Questions may be sent to WHBransonMemorial@hotmail.com.

In the article Ikenberry discusses the complications surrounding the U.S. – Japan alliance, and the need for both countries to rethink their policies. The issue, the author asserts, is two-fold. On the one hand the U.S. has been working to position Japan as an ally that will stand "shoulder to shoulder" with the United States in dealing with the international community. Usurping this vision, however, is Japan's inability to assuage international concerns, particularly with China and Korea, about its militaristic past.

Unlike Germany, Ikenberry notes, which after WWII managed to put its "history issue" behind them, post-war Japan has been unsuccessful. Japan's problem was highlighted again this month on the anniversary of the end of the war, when its Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi made his anticipated visit to the controversial Yasukumi Shrine. The shrine, which is dedicated to the spirits of soldiers and others who died fighting on behalf of the Japanese emperor, also includes the names of World War II-era Class A war criminals.

According to Ikenberry, in order to change international perceptions Japan needs to convincingly demonstrate its commitment to pursuing the path of "normalization," though the author points out, the country has seemingly done all the right things. "Turning a necessity into a virtue, Japan celebrated its 'peace constitution' and defined itself as a 'civilian' great power that would invest in international peace and security under the auspices of the United Nations." Symbolic gestures, such as the Prime Minister’s annual pilgrimage to the controversial shrine however, overshadow such efforts.

Ikenberry outlines a strategy for both countries. First, Japan should model itself after Germany and pursue a path of regional diplomacy, shedding its isolationist status and inviting China and South Korea to particulate in articulating a plan to ensure East Asian security. The United States in turn should encourage these efforts and work with Japan to take a proactive role in establishing a cohesive East Asia order.

Ikenberry writes, "Today the Middle East burns -- but East Asia simmers. Tokyo and Washington should use the coming months to turn down the heat and add some new ingredients to the pot."

Weinberg received his A.B. from Princeton and earned his M.B.A. from Harvard University in 1950. He was a lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps, served in World War II and was promoted to captain during the Korean War.

He joined Goldman Sachs in 1950 and retired from the firm in 1990. Describing his demeanor and personal style, the New York Times noted "Mr. Weinberg had a blunt, unpretentious manner. His style, like his disposition, was unadorned. He kept his hair closely cropped and wore off-the-rack suits and socks that hung a bit too low. He was also known for his earthy maxims, many of them aimed to deflate the ballooning egos of his bankers."

Current Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein commented that Weinberg "built many of the firm's most enduring client relationships and through his leadership, helped elevate the firm's stature globally."

Peter Goldmark is the current John L. Weinberg/Goldman Sachs & Co. Visiting Professor at the School. Previous holders of the professorship include Frederick Hitz '61, a School lecturer and former Inspector General of the CIA, Jack Matlock, former U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, and Anthony Shorris M.P.A. '77, currently director of the School's Policy Research Institute for the Region.