“It’s often said that democracies are measured by the participation of their citizens,” President Elaine Tuttle Hansen observed. “We are fortunate at Bates to have student Democrats and Republicans who each year take that civic commitment to heart and work to register their fellow students.”

Hansen listed several ways Bates is getting out the vote as we approach Election Day Nov. 2:

* As in past years, both groups set up tables on Orientation Day to register new students to vote. Since then, the effort has continued one-to-one.

* Discussions on the debates have been moderated by Assistant Professor of Rhetoric Stephanie Kelley Romano and Professor of Political Science James Richter. Richter is also moderating a series of student discussions about election issues each Wednesday, 6-7 p.m. in the Rowe Room of Commons.  Occasional guests have included Judy Meyer, editorial page editor of the Lewiston Sun Journal.

* TV debate-watching nights are being organized around their respective big screens by the Republicans, Democrats, and those who prefer a non-partisan venue.

*A panel discussion was held on Oct. 6 to discuss the Palesky Tax Cap referendum in Maine, and what it would mean to Lewiston.  Panelists were:  John L. Painter, Candidate for District 74; Dale Douglas, Maine School Management Association; Nathan Harrington, Bates ’05; Weston Bonney, Maine State School Board; Tom Hood, Longley Elementary School Principal; Robert Walker, President of Maine Education Association and chair of Maine Education Leadership Consortium.

*  Election issues will again be the topic of a speech by Thomas E. Mann www.brook.edu/scholars/tmann.htm of the Brookings Institution on “The 2004 Election: What’s at Stake?” at 7 p.m. Oct. 18 in Chase Hall Lounge.  There will be a voter registration drive outside of Chase Lounge beginning at 6:30pm.

Participants are moderator James Richter, professor of political science, Bates College; Arlene MacLeod, associate professor of political science, Bates College; Dov Waxman, assistant professor of government, Bowdoin College; and Jon Custis, U.S. Marine Corps captain and a member of the Bates College Class of 1991, who will participate via speaker-phone. Panel members will offer remarks and then open the discussion to the audience. Planned topics will range from the war in Iraq to religious fundamentalism to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Proficient in Russian and German, Richter is the author of Khrushchev’s Double Bind: International Pressures and Domestic Coalition Politics (Johns Hopkins, 1994) and the essay “Russian Foreign Policy and the Politics of National Identity,” included in the collection The Sources of Russian Foreign Policy After the Cold War (Westview, 1999). A member of the Bates faculty since 1987, he received the 1992 Bates Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching.

The author of Accommodating Protest: Working Women, the New Veiling, and Change in Cairo (Columbia University Press, 1991) and several articles on women and political change,  MacLeod teaches courses in political theory, area studies (Middle East and China) and women and politics. Her current research interests include the study of political imagination, politics and literature, and alternative ways of writing about politics, such as the personal essay and historical fiction.

Waxman teaches international relations and Middle Eastern politics. A former faculty member at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey, and a visiting fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle East and African Studies at Tel Aviv University, Israel, Waxman also has worked as a researcher at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a foreign policy think-tank in Washington, D.C.  He is the author of three monographs, The Crisis of Identity in Post-Kemalist Turkey: Domestic Discord and Foreign Policy (1998), The Islamic Republic of Iran: Between Revolution and Realpolitik (1998) and Immigration and Identity: A New Security Perspective in Euro-Maghreb Relations (1997), all published by the Research Institute for the Study of Conflict and Terrorism. Widely published in scholarly journals, Waxman is writing a book, Defending/Defining the Nation: The Pursuit of Peace and the Crisis of Israeli Identity.

Custis received his Bates degree in political science with a focus on international affairs. He joined the Marine Corps in 1992 and is a company commander of a Light Armored Reconnaissance battalion. He served in Somalia in 1994, and in Iraq and Kuwait from February through June 2004. He will return to Iraq in fall 2004.

Four members of the Bates College faculty will lead a forum exploring the U.S. war with Iraq and relations between the two countries at 7 p.m. Wednesday, April 7, in Skelton Lounge, Chase Hall, 56 Campus Avenue.

The event is open to the public at no charge.

The United States and Iraq: A Forum for the Bates College Community will be hosted by Professor James Richter and assistant professors Áslaug Ásgeirsdóttir and Matthew Nelson, all of the political science department, and Thomas Tracy, Phillips Professor of Religion.

Each of the four will speak briefly and then the discussion will be opened to comments and questions from the floor. Themes to be discussed include how the war on Iraq fits with “just war” theory, why intelligence failures are so common, how Iraq fits into the larger U.S. policy of preventive war and what steps lie ahead for the United States.

The forum is sponsored by the Office of the Dean of Faculty. For more information call 207-786-6195.

Panelists include Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe op-ed columnist; Seth Gitell, writer for the Boston Phoenix; activist and teacher Rosalie Tyler Paul, a board member at Peace Action Maine; and James Richter, associate professor of political science at Bates College.

Jacoby has been an op-ed columnist for the Globe since 1994. Seeking a conservative voice to balance its liberal roster of commentators, the Globe hired him away from its competitor the Boston Herald, where he had been chief editorial writer since 1987. The Boston Phoenix dubbed his twice-weekly essays “a must-read,” and the Globe began receiving more mail about his columns than those of all its other columnists combined. The first recipient of the Breindel Prize, a $10,000 award for opinion journalism, Jacoby has at different times been a political commentator for WBUR, Boston’s National Public Radio affiliate; the host of Talk of New England, a weekly television program; and a frequent guest on WCVB-TV’s public affairs program, Five on Five. He practiced law briefly at the firm of Baker & Hostetler in Cincinnati, Ohio, but returned to Boston to serve as deputy manager of Ray Shamie’s 1984 U.S. Senate campaign. In 1985-87, he was assistant to John Silber, president of Boston University. Jacoby graduated from George Washington University and from Boston University Law School.

A political writer for the Boston Phoenix, the nationally recognized weekly alternative newspaper, Gitell addresses state, national and international issues. He also pens a twice-weekly Internet column, “The Daily Jolt,” in which he often discusses the U.S. “war on terror.” Gitell appears frequently as a political analyst on New England Cable News. Prior to joining the Phoenix, Gitell was the Washington-based editor of The Forward, where he broke various national stories including Hilary Clinton’s hidden Jewish roots and her decision to change her prior position on Israel. He also covered the emergence of the democratic opposition to Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi National Congress and the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998. His work has appeared in The New Republic, The Weekly Standard, The Wall Street Journal and The American Prospect. Author of Broken Promise: The Story of U.S. Army Special Forces and the Dega People in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam, 1961-65 (Radix Press, 1996), Gitell received his bachelor’s degree from Harvard College and a J.D. from the New York University School of Law.

Paul served as a board member of Peace Action Maine for 10 years, stepping down from her four-year position as board chair in 2002. A delegate at Peace Action’s national congress, she is a retired teacher who taught studio art at North Yarmouth Academy and Waynflete School.

Associate professor of political science at Bates, Richter regularly teaches courses on international relations and the politics of post-communism and environmental diplomacy, as well as seminars in theories of international politics and in nongovernmental organizations and world politics. His current research concerns the role of nongovernmental organizations and transnational activism in global governance, with particular attention to the impact of democratic assistance and transnational activism on the feminist and environmental movements in Russia.

Proficient in Russian and German, Richter is the author of Khruschev’s Double Bind: International Pressures and Domestic Coalition Politics (Johns Hopkins, 1994) and the essay “Russian Foreign Policy and the Politics of National Identity”, included in the collection The Sources of Russian Foreign Policy After the Cold War (Westview, 1999). A member of the Bates faculty since 1987, he received the 1992 Bates Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching. Richter received his bachelor’s degree from Cornell University and a master’s and doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley.

Panelists include Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe op-ed columnist; Seth Gitell, writer for the Boston Phoenix; activist and teacher Rosalie Tyler Paul, a board member at Peace Action Maine; and James Richter, associate professor of political science at Bates College.

Jacoby has been an op-ed columnist for the Globe since 1994. Seeking a conservative voice to balance its liberal roster of commentators, the Globe hired him away from its competitor the Boston Herald, where he had been chief editorial writer since 1987. The Boston Phoenix dubbed his twice-weekly essays “a must-read,” and the Globe began receiving more mail about his columns than those of all its other columnists combined.

The first recipient of the Breindel Prize, a $10,000 award for opinion journalism, Jacoby has at different times been a political commentator for WBUR, Boston’s National Public Radio affiliate; the host of Talk of New England, a weekly television program; and a frequent guest on WCVB-TV’s public affairs program, Five on Five. He practiced law briefly at the firm of Baker & Hostetler in Cincinnati, Ohio, but returned to Boston to serve as deputy manager of Ray Shamie’s 1984 U.S. Senate campaign. In 1985-87, he was assistant to John Silber, president of Boston University. Jacoby graduated from George Washington University and from Boston University Law School.

A political writer for the Boston Phoenix, the nationally recognized weekly alternative newspaper, Gitell addresses state, national and international issues. He also pens a twice-weekly Internet column, “The Daily Jolt,” in which he often discusses the U.S. “war on terror.” Gitell appears frequently as a political analyst on New England Cable News.

Prior to joining the Phoenix, Gitell was the Washington-based editor of The Forward, where he broke various national stories including Hilary Clinton’s hidden Jewish roots and her decision to change her prior position on Israel. He also covered the emergence of the democratic opposition to Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi National Congress and the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998. His work has appeared in The New Republic, The Weekly Standard, The Wall Street Journal and The American Prospect. Author of Broken Promise: The Story of U.S. Army Special Forces and the Dega People in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam, 1961-65 (Radix Press, 1996), Gitell received his bachelor’s degree from Harvard College and a J.D. from the New York University School of Law.

Paul served as a board member of Peace Action Maine for 10 years, stepping down from her four-year position as board chair in 2002. A delegate at Peace Action’s national congress, she is a retired teacher who taught studio art at North Yarmouth Academy and Waynflete School.

Associate professor of political science at Bates, Richter regularly teaches courses on international relations and the politics of post-communism and environmental diplomacy, as well as seminars in theories of international politics and in nongovernmental organizations and world politics. His current research concerns the role of nongovernmental organizations and transnational activism in global governance, with particular attention to the impact of democratic assistance and transnational activism on the feminist and environmental movements in Russia.

Proficient in Russian and German, Richter is the author of Khruschev’s Double Bind: International Pressures and Domestic Coalition Politics (Johns Hopkins, 1994) and the essay Russian Foreign Policy and the Politics of National Identity, included in the collection The Sources of Russian Foreign Policy After the Cold War (Westview, 1999). A member of the Bates faculty since 1987, he received the 1992 Bates Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching. Richter received his bachelor’s degree from Cornell University and a master’s and doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley.

The conference, sponsored by the Maine Collaborative for Education in the Arts and Humanities, begins at 9 a.m.

Muskie Archives director Christopher M. Beam, who worked on the Nixon White House Tapes for four years while on the staff of the National Archives, is the conference’s lead scholar. He will discuss the Nixon White House taping system and its role in the Watergate scandal.

Other conference faculty will be James G. Richter, associate professor of political science at Bates, who will speak on Nixon’s foreign policy; and Gregory Gallant, director of the Margaret Chase Smith Library in Skowhegan, who will discuss the former president’s domestic policy.

The conference on the Nixon presidency is the second program the Maine Collaborative has offered in partnership with the Muskie Archives. The first was “Why Vietnam? The U.S. Path Toward Intervention, 1945- 1965,” presented last spring.

In addition to classical works, the ensemble will play the “Dialogue for Two Trumpets” by the contemporary composer Eugene Bozza. The piece will feature trumpeters Josh Clark and Meredith Haviland, both Bates students.

Also members of the quintet are student Benjamin Kloda, French horn; James Richter, associate professor of political science, trombone; and Kirk Read, assistant professor of French, tuba.