The Center on Congress at Indiana University will celebrate its 10th anniversary in a series of events at IU Bloomington Oct. 8-9, including two events at which center director Lee Hamilton will address the public. The celebration also marks the official debut of Hamilton's new book, Strengthening Congress, published by Indiana University Press, which details the steps Congress should take to re-establish the power and influence envisioned for it in the Constitution.

Military coups used to be a regular occurrence in Latin America, but the coup that ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya early Sunday was quite different from those of the past, said Jeffrey L. Gould, a Central America expert at Indiana University Bloomington. The primary difference: the United States, along with virtually every other nation, has condemned it.

Media expert and election-reform advocate Mark Crispin Miller will speak Thursday, Oct. 2, at Indiana University Bloomington. His lecture, "Rigged: Election Fraud and Media Coverage, 2000-2008," will take place at 7 p.m. in Woodburn Hall 100.

Former U.S. Senator Birch Bayh will return to his alma mater on Thursday, Sept. 25, to present a lecture on the importance of church and state separation. Bayh, JD'60, will give a public talk from 3:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. in the Moot Court Room at the Indiana University School of Law--Bloomington.

The Indiana University Institute for Advanced Study, in cooperation with the IU Center on Congress, is presenting a Branigin Lecture Series, "Thinking about the Election," on the presidency, elections and politics. Prominent historian Robert Dallek, the author of numerous presidential biographies, will lead off the series on Thursday, Sept. 18.

John Karaagac, the author of John McCain: An Essay in Military and Political History, commments on McCain's candidacy for president. Karaagac teaches public policy in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University Bloomington.

Indiana University sociologist Fabio Rojas discusses "disenchanted" anti-war demostrators and their impact on presidential campaign.

James Collins, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia, and several other prominent specialists will gather at Indiana University on Friday, March 21, to discuss the future of Russian politics and democracy. The panel discussion, hosted by the Russian and East European Institute, will take place at noon in the State Room East of the Indiana Memorial Union, 900 E. Seventh St.

Prominent military historian Andrew J. Bacevich will present the 2008 Paul V. McNutt Lecture at Indiana University Bloomington, speaking on "U.S. Foreign Policy After Iraq." The lecture, which is open to the public, will take place at 8 p.m. Wednesday, March 26, in the Georgian Room of the Indiana Memorial Union, 900 E. Seventh St. in Bloomington.

News images of political candidates are vastly underappreciated as a source of information and play a central role in shaping voter impressions of presidential candidates, according to a recently published visual analysis of the last four presidential elections by two Indiana University professors.

The U.S. Supreme Court decision to review Indiana's voter ID law "raises the possibility of another self-inflicted wound, like the Court's decision to resolve the 2000 election in favor of George Bush," say Patrick Baude, the Ralph F. Fuchs Professor of Law and Public Servic at the Indiana University School of Law in Bloomington. Baude said whatever the Court decides will favor either Democrats or Republicans, a partisan result that could weaken its moral authority.

In this week's special issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (online), Indiana University political scientist Elinor Ostrom and colleagues argue that while many basic conservation strategies are sound, their use is often flawed. The strategies are applied too generally, they say, as an inflexible, regulatory "blueprint" that foolishly ignores local customs, economics and politics.

Hispanic Heritage Month begins Saturday (Sept. 15), which is the anniversary of independence for five Latin American countries, and continues until Oct. 15. Contact information for each professor is listed below. Indiana University Bloomington professors have prepared comments from immigration to shifting views of Latinos after 9-11.

John Nieto-Phillips and Khalil Muhammad are professors of American history at Indiana University who study immigration and race relations. Both are available to comment on issues related to immigration in the U.S. and the likely legacy of current immigration debates.

About 80 faculty members at Indiana University's Bloomington campus have research or professional interests in the Middle East. They can be found from the Kelley School of Business to the Jacobs School of Music and in many specialized areas as well, such as designing national health care plans and government administration. The new director of IU's Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies Program hopes to involve as many of them as possible in the program's future activities.

The Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Indiana University Bloomington will hold a workshop on the topic, "Political Imaginaries in Latin America: Reverberations within the Contemporary Left," on Friday (May 4).

In this edition of Lecture Notes, celebrate the study of Alzheimer's, explore the artwork of Kalidou Sy and find out if you are fit to breed.

A Senate committee has approved subpoenas to White House adviser Karl Rove, former White House counsel Harriet E. Miers, and deputy White House counsel William Kelley to explain their roles in the dismissal of eight U.S. attorneys. The issue raises key questions on the doctrine of executive privilege in protecting private conversations with the president's key staff. Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington Professor Dawn Johnsen, a former acting assistant attorney general in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel under President Bill Clinton, is available to speak about issues of executive privilege as it relates to this situation.

Former Congressman Lee H. Hamilton, co-chair of the Iraq Study Group, will deliver a talk entitled "Iraq: What's next?" addressing the degree to which President George W. Bush's plan for Iraq parts ways with the Iraq Study Group's recommendations. The event will be held Tuesday, March 13, 2007, from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C. Media must RSVP in order to attend.

This media tip sheet features environmental regulation expertise from Indiana University's School of Public and Environmental Affairs. These tips address the negative effect of "looming regulations," ethanol as a climate change solution, the benefits of bacteria, and concerns about cooling through atmospheric injections.

Government ownership is not always the best way to protect natural resources, said Elinor Ostrom, director of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University. In a presentation given on Saturday (Feb. 17) at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, she described a diagnostic framework to help policymakers develop sustainability plans for each unique resource. Contradicting the standard approach to environmental protection, the Multi-tier Framework for Analyzing Sustainable Social-Ecological Systems relies on her conviction that "most people can be trusted if the institutions enhance trust."

A study of nearly 500 city and county governments demonstrates that private sector contracting results in lower full-time public employment and higher numbers of part-time government workers. The study was led by Indiana University School of Public and Environmental Affairs professor Sergio Fernandez and was published this month in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management.

Tyler Drumheller, former chief of the CIA European Division and author of the new book, On the Brink: An Insider's Account of How the White House Compromised American Intelligence, will speak at Indiana University's School of Public and Environmental Affairs on Nov. 16.