On Nov. 19, UT students and Austin community members marched through campus chanting, “Not another nickel, not another dime, no more money for Israel’s crimes.” (A separate protest with many of the same protesters took place on Nov. 17 in downtown Austin.) Speakers, including UT journalism professor Robert Jensen and Saif Kazim, the president of UT’s Society for Islamic Awareness, explained the current crisis in Gaza and the necessity for a domestic campaign to end U.S. funding of the Israeli occupation, bombardment and economic suffocation of the Palestinian people. The Nov. 19 march intended to show UT students that the campaign could begin here on campus.   

Public action is necessary because of the United States government’s complicity in the occupation. Both the protest on campus and downtown saw a broad base of supporters come out in opposition to Israeli occupation, which was deemed illegal by United Nations Resolution 242 and the International Court of Justice ruling in 2004. These two protests are following a global outcry against the newest act of Israeli aggression.

UT students must understand that not only their federal government, but also their University is complicit in Israeli war crimes. UT’s investment company, University of Texas Investment Management Company (UTIMCO), invests in the industry built around the Israeli occupation of Palestine. UTIMCO profits from investments in companies like United Technologies, which produces UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters for the Israel Defense Force. These UTIMCO investments follow the U.S. government’s lead, which, according to Amnesty International, sells attack aircraft and missiles to Israel.

Social movements have traditionally flourished on college campuses. In April 1986, 42 UT students protesting apartheid refused to surrender a shanty they had constructed on the West Mall and were arrested by UT police. The following Friday, 182 students were arrested during a successive, much larger West Mall rally in protest of apartheid in South Africa at that time. The protesting students had a specific demand: They wanted the University to divest, or strip itself of its financial interests, in South Africa. Today, UT students again have the power to shape the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Within hours of Israel’s launching Operation Pillar of Defense two weeks ago, President Obama voiced his support for Israel’s right to self-defense — a claim that ignores Israel’s disproportionate use of resources and force. Obama’s position represents only a fraction of the U.S. government’s pro-Israeli foreign policy, which provides Israel with $3 billion a year in foreign aid. Arguably, the U.S. policy violates the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, which declared it illegal for the U.S. government to fund foreign governments that are consistent human rights violators.

Israel has faced a long history of criticism by various human rights organizations and official bodies of the United Nations.

In 2000, the United Nations Human Rights Committee reported “demolition of houses and closure of the Palestinian territories” and the “death of 127 civilians, including many children,” which constitute “war crimes.” In 2004, the International Court of Justice ruled that the wall built in the Occupied Territories breaches international humanitarian law by “imposing restrictions on the freedom of the inhabitants” and limiting “access to health services, educational establishments and primary sources of water.” An Amnesty International report titled “Operation Cast Lead: 22 Days of Death and Destruction” reports that Israeli F-16 combat aircraft “targeted and destroyed civilian homes … often while they slept” and that Israeli Hellfire missiles killed “children playing on the roofs of their homes or in the street and other civilians going about their daily business ... in broad daylight.” Though Israel’s countless war crimes have been well-documented, the U.S. government maintains its generous $3 billion a year in foreign aid to Israel.

The U.S. government’s recent acts of unwavering, bipartisan support of Israel demonstrate the normalization of endorsing Israel’s actions in our political system. We cannot depend on our political system to change current U.S. foreign policy towards Israel. Change must come first from social movements.

Challenging U.S. policy must begin on this campus with a call for the University to divest its interests in Israel. The Nov. 19 protest on the West Mall, like the one decades before, reminded University decision-makers that UT students can hold the University accountable for its actions. What unified the speakers and marchers was an understanding that UT students can effect changes. Join the movement to end U.S. support of Israel. Rather than being spectators to U.S.-endorsed occupation, we can start the path to peace here.

Noriega is a journalism sophomore from Irving and Orta is a Latin American Studies and international relations senior from Dallas.

In recent weeks, anti-American fury has ravaged the Middle East. Following a film mocking the Prophet Mohammad, protesters vented their anger against the United States, blaming it for what they consider an attack on Islam and Muslims. This series of violent and non-violent events, ranging from peaceful demonstrations to attacks against embassies and other American institutions, has triggered debates nationally as well as globally. The issues being discussed are  freedom of speech, the “tolerability” of Islam and religions in general, the danger of religious political groups to national and international security, the feasibility of the democratic movement following the Arab Spring, and the reliability of the U.S. foreign policy in this region.

The majority of people in the Middle East connect the U.S. government and all 300 million Americans with the action of the one individual responsible for the making and posting of the film.

Muslims within the United States have reacted in a different way to this issue. Dedicated Muslim community organizations have initiated informational sessions about Islam and its message of peace; a number of mosques have opened their doors to answer questions about Islam. Reactions and actions of Muslims in the U.S. have been shaped by the environment those Muslims live in. They have engaged in civic communication with respect to the law and aimed at educating others about a different perspective.

As a North African woman, having the chance and the privilege of living and studying in three different continents and observing objectively such events, I wondered: What makes two persons who have a very close set of religious beliefs and values, react extremely in different ways toward something they both consider offensive to their religion?

I believe that the reason for the different reactions is a misconception and misunderstanding in what I will call the “Middle Eastern mind” of the legal and moral authority of the U.S. government in limiting the exercise of free speech.

An average Middle-Eastern citizen has never known democracy, never exercised free speech and has always lived under dictatorship. In fact, he has only known an omnipresent government that is driven by censorship; a sort of what I will call “God Government” that has the extent of power up to controlling every aspect of a citizen’s life, including his personal life. Combining all these factors together, it is understandable how a considerable number of people in the Middle East were led  to believe that it is of the U.S. government’s responsibility to prevent such a movie from appearing and, by failing in doing so, that government — in these people’s thinking — became an accomplice of the movie’s content.

Unfortunately, the average Middle-Easterner fails in understanding that American citizens protected by the First Amendment cannot be censored by the U.S. government. But, what has added insult to injury is that political leaders in the Middle East themselves have also promulgated misinformation  about this particular issue. These leaders have declared their intentions either to sue the movie producer or to ask the U.S. government to censor the movie and any type of anti-Islam work.

Being aware of the number of anti-Islam videos that are freely and easily accessible on the net, I wonder where we are heading — if  every video or book or painting sparks violent expressions of rage and political turmoil. In the aftermath of these events, I believe deepened security around U.S. facilities and diplomacy  won’t be enough to address the issue. The responsibility is shared by officials and members of civic society in both countries to create more dialogue between the United States and Middle East and North African (MENA) countries, which could lead to a better understanding of our differences.

Despite all those differences, I do believe we have by far more in common. Educating future generations in the MENA region about the American system and the basic fundamentals with regard to the First Amendment will induce a more peaceful and educated way of managing such sensitive issues. This objective should figure now as a top element in the agenda of all educational, cultural, social and political partnerships involving people from the MENA region with American institutions.

From my limited experience in explaining to other Middle Easterners the differences between our two systems, as well as how real people with extremely different sets of belief can coexist thanks to the laws and institutions, I concluded that violence is the voice and manifest of misinformation and miscommunication. Getting to know each other better through better communication is a light to modern salvation.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared on Sept. 21 that Tunisia should not be discouraged by the latest violent actions committed by extremists. In the same sense, it is our responsibility as Tunisians and North-Africans to contribute to the process of education, dialogue and exchange with the world to build our democratic and stable institutions, thus to create a prosperous and healthy environment.

In the end, debates about the issues at hand could be used as a platform to export all ideas regarding liberty and freedom to those countries.

Hamdi is an engineering graduate student from Gafsa, Tunisia.

More than a decade after the world-changing 9/11 attacks, the UT community continues to see the devastation of that day seriously affect its campus, down to the classes the University offers.

With the horror and destruction of 9/11 also came analyses by Americans of how to combat a new threat. Questions were asked, studies conducted and conclusions drawn. Thomas Palaima, classics professor and Middle Eastern studies expert, said it was discovered that the U.S. government, a government that spends more money on military defense than any other nation in the world, was ill-equipped to deal with conflicts in the Middle East.

“One of the problems with 9/11 was that one found out that we did not even have, even in the specialized areas of the government and the military, the number of experts in Middle Eastern culture and languages that we should,” Palaima said.

He said in response to the lack of qualified military personnel, UT and many other universities across the country soon began to adjust their curricula, increasing the size and strength of their Middle Eastern studies programs. He said the increased focus on the Middle East did not spill over to interest in other cultural studies programs.

“It would be good if we applied the same concern across the board in other areas, and I just don’t see that,” Palaima said.

Palaima said he believes the focus on Middle Eastern studies has actually decreased the overall size of ethnic studies programs nationwide, as total resources have shifted and ultimately decreased. Should the U.S. come into conflict with certain other parts of the world, Palaima said the U.S. could end up in a situation similar to that after 9/11, with a lack of expert personnel and a subsequent unbalanced shift in academics.

Kristen Brustad, department chair of Middle Eastern studies and associate professor of Arabic, said she has seen growth in her department because of 9/11.

“The number of Arabic majors went up fairly dramatically over these last ten years,” she said. “We now have the largest graduate program in the country in terms of Arabic studies. It used to be only the large universities had an Arabic program, but now, it is small colleges and community colleges as well, and now a number of our graduates are teaching in those schools.”

According to statistics from UT’s office of institutional research, the number of students enrolled in the Middle Eastern studies department at UT increased by 97.67 percent, when comparing 2002 fall enrollment with fall enrollment from 2011. That included a 52 percent increase in the number of undergraduates, bringing the number of students from 25 to 38. There was an 80 percent increase in the number of students pursuing a master’s degree, from 10 to 18. And there was a 262.5 percent increase in the number of Ph.D. candidates, from 8 to 29.

The same statistics for the departments of Slavic and Eurasian studies and Spanish and Portuguese show a 37.04 percent decline, from 27 to 17, and a 40 percent decline, from 440 to 264, in total Spanish and Portuguese enrollment respectively.

Palaima said a replicate situation took place in the U.S. following the Cold War, where Russian studies were escalated as U.S.-Soviet conflict grew.

“It is a very similar situation,” Palaima said.

Brustad said, luckily, one thing that has not seemed to change at UT is the tolerant atmosphere for Middle Eastern students.

“Recently, I would say not at UT, but at the climate at large, I hear a lot more negative rhetoric in the public discourse at large,” Brustad said. “Former students of mine from before I came to UT, where I taught before, who now work for the government have even been attacked because they are Muslim or Arabic.”

Mai Khattab, a member of UT’s Arab student association, said she has seen that acceptance while at UT for the last two years.

“For us, as Arabs here at UT, we are treated just like any other group,” Khattab said. “We have never had anyone be offensive and treat us badly or anything.”

Today’s war on terrorism originated from an idea pushed by a president that terrified his country, said award-winning journalist Seymour Hersh.

Hersh, contributor for The New Yorker and Pulitzer Prize winner, visited campus Thursday evening to give a progress report on the state of the global war on terrorism as this year’s speaker for the 2012 Julius and Suzan Glickman Lecture.

“When other countries like Spain, England and India were attacked by terrorists, they responded using their justice system instead of military action,” he said. “We should’ve done the same, but we got caught up in Bush’s unjustified idea of what was going on.”

Best known for his investigative journalism, Hersh received the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting for his exposure of the My Lai Massacre, in which the U.S. government covered up the killing of hundreds of unarmed Vietnamese civilians at the hands of American soldiers during the Vietnam War.

Stephen Sonnenberg, adjunct professor for the University’s Humanities Institute, said few individuals have the courage and conscious to expose a government that is acting against its society’s culture.

“It takes a very special person to uncover what Seymour did,” Sonnenberg said. “Optimism is an evolutionary phenomenon, and his work pushed for it.”

Summarizing the United States’ current relationship with the Middle East, Hersh said the Obama administration hopes to get out of Afghanistan before being “the last to die,” and Pakistan is under control. He said Syria is “an ugly picture,” and Iran and the U.S. want to avoid a preemptive Israeli attack against Iran.

“The Israelis have pulled down our pants,” he said. “We are just playing checkers while they are playing poker.”

Hersh is known for criticizing the U.S. government in his books on the war on terrorism. The United States should not be deemed a reflection of presidential decisions that were not fully thought out, Hersh said.

“We are not morally bankrupt,” he said. “We just have lousy leadership.”

Hersh praised today’s youth and said the Arab Spring was proof that younger individuals are learning that the key to bringing down an oppressor is in organizing themselves against it, even if it’s through Facebook and Twitter.

A governmental crackdown on the First Amendment through laws being passed in Congress will leave society on the streets, but the internet’s impact on the industry already has everyone running around, he said.

Hersh’s uncanny ability to find factual information not presented by the government or the press demonstrated society’s misguidedness, said Julius Glickman, UT alumnus and founder of the lecture series.

“His knowledge is proof that we aren’t getting as many of the facts as we need to make the right decisions,” Glickman said. “We need 10,000 more journalists like him.”

NEW YORK — It was a decade when tens of millions of people in the U.S. experienced mass unemployment and social upheaval as the nation clawed its way out of the Great Depression and rumblings of global war were heard from abroad.

Now, intimate details of 132 million people who lived through the 1930s will be disclosed as the U.S. government releases the 1940 census on April 2 to the public for the first time after 72 years of privacy protection lapses.

Access to the records will be free and open to anyone on the Internet — but they will not be immediately name searchable.

For genealogists and family historians, the 1940 census release is the most important disclosure of ancestral secrets in a decade and could shake the branches of many family trees. Scholars expect the records to help draw a more pointillistic portrait of a transformative decade in American life.

Researchers might be able to follow the movement of refugees from war-torn Europe in the latter half of the 1930s; sketch out in more detail where 100,000 Japanese Americans interned during World War II were living before they were removed; and more fully trace the decades-long migration of blacks from the rural South to cities.

Henry Louis Gates Jr., a Harvard University professor and scholar of black history who has promoted the tracing of family ancestry through popular television shows, said the release of the records will be a “great contribution to American society.”

Gates, whose new PBS series “Finding Your Roots” begins March 25, said the “goldmine” of 1940 records would add important layers of detail to an existing collection of opened census records dating to 1790.

“It’s such a rare gift,” he said of the public’s access to census records, “especially for people who believe that establishing their family trees is important for understanding their relationship to American democracy, the history of our country, and to a larger sense of themselves.”

The release will greatly increase access to information on Japanese-American Internment during WWII, lives and labor affected by the Great Depression, as well as for historical and genealogical data.

“What we’ll be able to do now, which we really couldn’t do, is to take a look at what the Japanese-American community looked like on the eve of evacuation,” said Anderson, a professor of history and urban studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

More than 120,000 enumerators surveyed 132 million people for the Sixteenth Decennial Census — 21 million of whom are alive today in the U.S. and Puerto Rico, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The survey contained 34 questions directed at all households, plus 16 supplemental questions asked of 5 percent of the population. New questions reflected the government’s intent on documenting the turbulent decade, by generating data on homelessness, migration, widespread unemployment, irregular salaries and fertility decline.

Some of the most contentious questions focused on personal income and were deemed so sensitive they were placed at the end of the survey. Less than 300,000 people opted to have their income responses sealed.

In part because of the need to overcome a growing reluctance by the American public to answer questionnaires and fears about some new questions, the bureau launched its biggest outreach and promotional campaign up to that time, according to records obtained at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, N.Y.

It opened its first Division of Public Affairs to blanket the country with its message, reaching out to over 10,000 publications and recruiting public officials, clergy and business owners to promote it.

Movie studios were enlisted to encourage their film stars to participate, including Cesar Romero, who later played the Joker in the Batman television series. A photograph of President Franklin D. Roosevelt taking the census also was used for the campaign.

The bureau also hired the managing editor of “Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life” to galvanize support in the black community. However, studies in the 1940s revealed undercounts, including 13 percent of draft-age black men.

In a first for the National Archives and Records Administration, the nation’s recordkeeper plans to post the entire census on the Internet — its biggest digitization effort to date.

That might be unsurprising given that increasingly popular online ancestry services make vast amounts of genealogical data available. But for previous decennial census releases, researchers had to trek to NARA branches to crank through microfilm machines.

Still, finding a name in the 3.8 million digitized images won’t be as easy as a Google search: It could be at least six months after the release before a nationwide name index is created.

In the meantime, researchers will need an address to determine a census enumeration district — a way to carve up the map for surveying — to identify where someone lived and then browse the records.

Some experts said enthusiasm for the release could be dampened by the lack of a name index, especially for novices.

“It may very well frustrate the newcomers,” said Thomas Macentee, an industry analyst helping recruit volunteers for a name indexing effort sponsored in part by the Mormon-run FamilySearch.org. “It’s like showing up on Black Friday. If you really want that TV set, if you really want that census record, you are going to be ready to go and you are going to keep at it no matter what.”

Publicly-traded Ancestry.com, which has over 1.7 million customers, is also working to make the census records searchable by indexing almost all fields and providing proprietary tools to mine the data.

Josh Hanna, a senior adviser for the company, said the 1940 census will be the biggest database of its kind. “It’ll be the deepest level of indexing we’ve ever done,” he said. Access to the index and tools will be available for free through the end of 2013.

Other individuals and organizations across the country are also working to ease the use of the records, including the New York Public Library, which is digitizing the full set of New York City’s 1940 telephone books to help people locate addresses.

Genealogy societies and libraries also have been holding packed workshops to educate their members.

In January, about three dozen people gathered in Manhattan for a meeting of the MetroNY Genealogy & Computers Special Interest Group to discuss the census. They included Michelle Novak, who has spent six years searching for information about her paternal grandfather, but has no street address to help locate him.

Novak, 43, said family members recalled him as a heavy drinker who worked long hours for the Pennsylvania Railroad and abandoned his family in the early 1930s.

But the few records she has been able to find include a signature in a railroad pension book. She believes the 1940 census might hold additional answers.

“If I can find one record, anything, it may help,” she said in an email after the meeting. “Even if I find him in jail or deceased, at least I will have an answer.”

Printed on Tuesday, March 20, 2012 as: Census covering Great Depression to be released in next few weeks

For the past several months, a viral campaign to prevent the passage of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), its counterpart in the U.S. Senate, took the Internet by storm. Major web players such as Google, Wikipedia and Reddit banded together for an unprecedented Internet blackout on Wednesday. This act of defiance sent a clear message to Congress: The Internet is not to be regulated.

Introduced in late October, SOPA and PIPA intend to curb copyright infringement by blocking websites, primarily foreign in origin, accused of violating U.S. copyrights. For example, if 20th Century Fox finds its movie “Avatar” streaming on a Chinese website, it could demand that Google remove the site from its search results, that advertising services stop financing the site, that Paypal stop accepting payments and that the U.S. government prevent people from going to the site entirely.

While benign in nature, the passing of SOPA and PIPA would have dire ramifications, as the bills’ vague language will most likely lead to abuse by copyright holders. In order for a website to be blacklisted, the site only has to be accused of infringement. Companies can take action against supposed perpetrators without a single court appearance or judicial sign-off, which could lead to their using this provision to hurt foreign rivals. The only thing that is required is a letter claiming “good faith belief” that a website is in violation.

Another aspect of the bills is the “anti-circumvention” clause, which would punish people for finding ways to get around SOPA and PIPA. For example, if you post a link to a copyrighted movie on your friend’s Facebook wall, Facebook would then be legally bound to remove that link. Enforcing this type of clause would create logistical nightmares for large companies. Google and Facebook would be virtually unable to police themselves because of the large amount of traffic they receive. This would also create an extra burden for smaller companies, as they may not have the resources to abide by the bills’ requirements.

If the bills pass, they could have several negative consequences on students. A copyright infringement on a single page of an educational website could result in the entire site’s being shut down.

Collaborative online resources built by the international community will most likely be targeted by SOPA and PIPA. These “open educational resources” are built upon the collection of information from thousands of universities and millions of students. Sharing these materials could be considered infringement, and would also be in danger if the bills are passed.

In the end, SOPA and PIPA are attempts to protect the interest of the bills’ supporters, most notably the Motion Pictures Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America.

The bills are both unnecessary and unenforceable. Current copyright laws, such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, already call for infringing materials to be taken down. We’ve all come across enough “This video has been removed” messages on YouTube to show that it works fine.

Moreover, because the bills are aimed at foreign websites, they will accomplish next to nothing in terms of blocking piracy. Overseas websites such as the Pirate Bay have advertising partners that are not U.S.-based and therefore cannot be shut out by the U.S. government. Additionally, people from outside the United States will still be able to readily access copyrighted content because violators are only blocked in the United States.

The goal of exterminating piracy is a noble one and should be applauded. However, piracy is better stopped with technological innovation rather than with poorly written bills. Congress has seen stiff opposition from the White House and Silicon Valley and must reconsider its course of action.
 

Shi is an electrical and computer engineering junior.

So political kerfuffle aside, you have to wonder exactly what a $16 muffin would taste like.

Last week’s news that the U.S. government paid $16 apiece for breakfast muffins at a Justice Department conference set off critics of government spending.

Hilton Worldwide, the hotel company that hosted the 2009 confab in Washington, disputes the accuracy of the claim, which appeared in a report by Cynthia A. Schnedar, the Justice Department’s inspector general. The hotel called it an accounting thing, explaining that the price included various drinks and gratuity charges, in addition to the muffins. Schnedar stands by the report.

All this fails to take into account the most important issue. If you did spend $16 on a muffin, what would it look like? How would it taste?

The typical muffin baked in an institutional setting, such as a hotel, costs about 50 cents or less, not including labor. If you go crazy extravagant and reach for the top-shelf organic flour, maybe some hand-harvested wild blueberries from Maine and fancy sugar, you’re still going to max out around $1 per muffin on raw ingredients.

Here in The Associated Press test kitchen, we started searching for ways to bump up the price of your basic muffin. The end result was anything but basic. We’re also pretty certain you’ll never see one of these babies served at a government conference.

Getting the price-per-muffin that high was hard. We took the obvious steps first — organic flour, sugar and milk, cultured butter, sea salt and free-range eggs. But we still weren’t even close. A rare honey imported from Zambia helped, as did a healthy amount of pricey macadamia nuts and some Tahitian vanilla beans.

But in the end, the only way to get to $16 was to reach for some old-fashioned booze and gold. That’s right, we glazed our muffins with a chocolate sauce made from organic dark chocolate cut with reduced Scotch Whisky (the good stuff!) and edible gold leaf flakes.

The result? A rather stunning and intense muffin that would cost a mere $192 per dozen (not counting labor) — or $16 each.

After clearing the House with a 269-191 vote, the Senate will vote Tuesday on the legislation to raise the nation’s current $14.3 trillion debt ceiling and cut funding for government programs to save $2.4 trillion over the next 10 years.

Finance professor Lewis Spellman said the decision will directly impact students by determining whether or not the federal government can fund financial aid programs and student loans.

“There’s a realization that the environment has changed and the U.S. government is no longer the rich uncle to bail everyone out,” Spellman said. “It all trickles down to businesses and to you and I as consumers.”

Spellman said the current economic crisis developed as a result of the federal government spending to promote economic growth during the baby boomer era, beginning around 1965, instead of saving it. Now that baby boomers are beginning to retire, the government cannot afford to pay its debts and benefits such as Social Security, which it promised to provide, he said.

“It strikes me that the only way to reconcile a desire for economic growth and jobs with trying to pay those entitlements is to set a limit to how much of entitlements will be paid each year relative to the level of income,” Spellman said. “The whole answer to affording more is growing more. Both parties must focus on ways to promote economic growth instead of just how much we spend.”

He said if the government defaults on its debts, as it is projected to do Aug. 2, it would affect students through higher interest rates for student loans.

“The reason student loans are possible is because the government guarantees them,” Spellman said. “We need fiscal control over our deficit or guarantees on [student loans] could very likely cease.”

University Democrats President Janette Martinez said students, including herself, who depend on federal aid to assist with their tuition costs should reach out to their Congressmen to keep funding for those programs in place.

“If interest rates go up after these debt ceiling talks, I’ll be graduating with a mountain of debt for student loans,” she said. “It’s important for University Democrats and other campus organizations, whether political or not, to inform students of the impact this could have on financial aid.”

If the bipartisan congressional committee formed to address the debt deal can agree on how to allocate government funding, Martinez said it will spur economic growth and job opportunities for graduating seniors, such as herself.

“Every program that is being funded can be qualified as necessary by a lot of people,” Martinez sad. “The biggest thing isn’t sacrificing one thing over another but trying to keep as many programs in place as possible by raising revenue.”

Economic recovery can only be achieved by drastically reducing government spending, said Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, in a weekly column on her website.

“A U.S. default debt would, for the first time, call into question the stability of the U.S. dollar,” Hutchison said. “Congressional Republicans believe that unprecedented levels of federal spending should be reduced to move from this year’s $1.4 trillion deficit to a balanced federal budget.”

The British Petroleum oil spill in April 2010 inspired a new partnership between UT and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to create a set of guidelines that will allow scientists to avoid future crises.

The Energy Institute at UT, MIT’s Energy Initiative and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute formed the Research Center for Environmental Protection at Hydrocarbon Energy Production Frontiers, REEF. Several UT colleges and schools will be involved, including the Cockrell School of Engineering, School of Law, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, McCombs School of Business and Jackson School of Geosciences. The team hopes to outline a set of realistic rules and steps to avoid major human-caused disasters, representatives said.

Director of the Energy Institute, Raymond Orbach is taking on a personal role with MIT faculty making sure programs from both schools are complimentary. Legal and regulatory aspects, environmental concerns and the risk of human error will be the main factors in REEF’s assessments, Orbach said.

Tadeusz Patzek, Chairman of UT’s Department of Petroleum & Geosystems Engineering, is part of the advisory board of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement which deals with issues relating to the REEF proposal.

“If we decide to drill, and most governments including U.S. government are of the opinion that we should, we should do it in a way as to minimize or eliminate damage to the environment,” Patzek said.

An option for extracting natural gas and oil is the process of fracking, a fairly recent method used since the ‘90s. It was first used extensively in the Barnett Shale in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, said energy and earth resources graduate student, Jenifer Wehner.

“People in the oil and gas industry commonly say ‘fracking’ to describe just one part of the whole gas exploration and production process,” according to a May 13 article from The New York Times. “Purists would say it is not really even part of ‘drilling’ but actually the ‘completion’ phase.”

Shale is a porous rock and because of its properties it holds on to gas molecules, and although there is gas in the rock, there is no way to extract it easily.

“Part of the concern regarding hydraulic fracking is putting water with chemicals down into the ground,” Wehner said. A concern is that water will seep out of the well where the oil was drilled and get into ground water.

The UT-MIT partnership is looking at areas where it’s tough to extract resources. The Arctic has a huge amount of oil and gas which is why it’s the next frontier, Orbach said, even though it’s a very sensitive environmental area. Further areas to explore include Alaska, Canada, Russia and Norway.

“We need to work with energy companies to ensure their practices are consistent with what we find best. We will bring to the government, awareness of what we’re doing but the government will decide whether to use our results or not,” Orbach said. “What we hope is that they will find them so attractive that they will help them formulate policy.”

According to an article from the Houston Chronicle on July 17, 2011, the center could require commitments of up to $100 million over five years, coming from multiple sponsors. 

An open letter from a UT professor urging President Obama to support vocally the cause of the Egyptian protestors has drawn the signatures of more than 150 political scientists across the country. In the face of demonstrators demanding the removal of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Obama was slow to declare a position, said Jason Brownlee, an associate professor of government and Middle Eastern studies. Brownlee said he wrote the letter to draw public and political attention to the United States’ place in the unrest. In an announcement on state-run television Tuesday, Mubarak said he would not run for another term in the next presidential election scheduled for September. The same day, Obama urged his Egyptian counterpart, whose held the position since 1981, not to seek a reelection bid. “There are two direct goals aimed at the U.S. government,” Brownlee said. “The first is that President Obama should stand on the side of the demonstrators and withdraw his support from Hosni Mubarak. The second is to reassess U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and consider how we got here in the first place.” Signatories include historians and researchers in relevant fields, including renowned author and lecturer Noam Chomsky; Clement Henry, a retired UT government professor and specialist in Egypt; and dual-degree master’s student Rebecca Hopkins. “Dr. Brownlee’s weight in the field is what led me to sign onto his letter,” said Hopkins, who is pursuing her degrees in public affairs and Middle Eastern studies. “I also just thought it was a cogent, thoughtful, well put together letter that addressed the constraints on both the U.S. and Egypt.” Roy Casagranda, an Austin Community College government professor, is from Egypt. He said sending an open letter to Obama to change the direction of U.S. foreign policy could be effective. “The U.S. government gives about $1.5 billion per year,” Casagranda said. “It’s the number two recipient of U.S. foreign aid and accounts for about 10 percent of the world’s sum of foreign aid.” Brownlee visited Egypt as a semester abroad student in 1995. His most recent visit was in 2009, when he witnessed demonstrations over the Israeli attack on Gaza, which drew 100,000 protestors to Alexandria, Egypt’s second largest city. “Lots and lots of people were getting together around foreign policy issues,” Brownlee said. “That was new.” Brownlee also took note of early dissent against the Mubarak regime, which he described as “white collar opposition: op-ed columnists and other middle-class active dissenters.” He said he hopes to get people thinking about U.S. policy in the Middle East region. “It’s difficult to change foreign policy, and it tends to come from lots of Americans putting pressure on the U.S. government,” he said.