The Institute recently added to its staff a vice president, Steven P. Berchem, whose responsibilities will include maintaining donor relations, coordinating research projects, and marketing. Mr. Berchem comes to AEI from the Cato Institute, where he was vice president for communications and host of "Cato Forum," a weekly television program devoted to public affairs. From 1993 to 1995, he was assistant vice president for communications of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, acting as the principal spokesman for the drug industry. Mr. Berchem holds bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
AEI and the Independent Women's Forum have joined forces to publish Women's Figures: The Economic Progress of Women in America. This new study challenges the widespread belief that women suffer from wage discrimination in today's employment market. Resident Fellow Diana Furchtgott-Roth and her coauthor, historian Christine Stolba, argue that most comparisons of men's and women's wages "fail to take into account underlying factors such as educational attainment, field of employment, work experience, and women's personal choices." The authors show that when all such factors are held constant, women between the ages of twenty-seven and thirty-three earn 95 to 98 cents for every dollar a man earns. The study points to the inequality of market outcomes for women and men as an indication of the efficiency of markets and the fundamentals of equal opportunity at work.
"Today we face a crisis of citizenship," Visiting Scholar John D. Fonte asserted in testimony on October 22 before the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration. "We have failed to affirm our core principles and to enact citizenship naturalization policies that accord with those principles." Mr. Fonte recommended that the nation return to the goal of Americanization for immigrants. He stressed that, among other things, this would entail pressing prospective citizens to learn English.
In the weeks leading up to the recent general election, Dinesh D'Souza traveled throughout California, discus-sing and debating the merits of the California Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI). This referendum sought to ban racial and gender preferences in all facets of public business. Mr. D'Souza was interviewed for numerous newspaper articles, radio shows, and television programs. He also took part in a dozen debates across the state, including a highly publicized exchange with Rev. Jesse Jackson at Stanford University. CCRI was approved at the polls.
In an article titled "The Anti-Defense League" (Commentary, November 1996), Resident Scholar Joshua Muravchik and Lawrence F. Kaplan contend that a powerful but misguided consensus has developed among opinion makers and major news sources. This consensus has two main tenets: "Not only are we spending much more than is necessary on defense, we are doing so at the expense of our domestic programs, which are being bled dry." The authors point out that domestic spending has continued to rise since the cold war ended, while defense spending in real terms has fallen each year and has been reduced by about one-third in total. They conclude that further defense cuts will prevent the investment in research that is necessary to ensure American supremacy in the face of future threats.
Federal support for science and technology significantly influences the long-term health of our economy. In the Journal of Commerce (November 7, 1996), Claude E. Barfield warns that federal funding of science is in danger of being gutted. "Policy makers and scientists should face squarely the prospect of diminishing public funding for science, and start debating the implications of that with greater candor than they have thus far."
