Night at the University Club
October 7, 2009
Richard J. Garfunkel
Linda and I had a great time with Jim and Vilma Caraley at the University Club which is located at 1 West 54th Street in old Manhattan. We were their guests for a great seafood dinner. We feasted on clams, oysters, shrimp and lobsters galore. Jim Caraley was one of Linda’s professors at Barnard College and lived for years in the village of North Tarrytown, now Sleepy Hollow. He also served as a village trustee. We had a great time talking about politics, FDR, and what is happening in the world. He was a guest on The Advocates this past June 17th, talking about the “role of political journals in the world of media talking heads.” The broadcast can be heard at http://advocates-wvox.com .
Jim is the editor of Political Science Quarterly, published since 1886, and President of The Academy of Political Science, and is also Research Professor of Political Science at Barnard College. For most of his career, he was Janet Robb Professor of the Social Science at Barnard College and Columbia University and Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia. (Information can be found at The Academy of PoliticalScience– website: www.psqonline.org .)
A specialist on American politics including city government and urban policies and problems and on congressional policies toward cities, Caraley has published numerous books and articles including Critical Issues for Clinton's Domestic Agenda, Doing More With Less: Cutback Management in New York City, and City Governments and Urban Problems. Caraley has been both an appointed and elected official in Westchester County local government.
Caraley has also published books in the field of national security policy, his latest one being the 2007 book, Terrorist Attacks and Nuclear Proliferation: Strategies for Overlapping Dangers. He has published American Hegemony: Preventive War, Iraq, and Imposing Democracy; September 11, Terrorist Attacks, and U.S. Foreign Policy; The New American Interventionism; The President's War Powers; and The Politics of Military Unification.
Caraley was a Russell Sage Foundation Visiting Scholar for academic year 1995-96, where he worked on a continuing project called Washington Abandons the Cities and the Urban Poor. Among his recent major articles are “Washington Abandons the Cities” and “Dismantling the Federal Safety Net: Fictions versus Realities”. His article on “Ending Welfare as We Know It: A Reform Still in Progress”, published in the Winter 2001 issue of the Quarterly was awarded a prize by the New York State Academy of Public Administration as the “outstanding publication of 2001.”
Caraley was elected chairman of the Barnard Political Science Department for ten three-year terms. He also established the Columbia Graduate Program in Public Policy and Administration in Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs and was its founding director.