Defense date: Early January

My personal and professional lives have been improving over the past 3 months. I am currently teaching two courses in Corporate Social Responsibility at Northeastern University, and I will probably teach 3 for the fall semester. I have been learning a great deal about both corporate social responsibility and social entrepreneurship as a result. I have been networking in Boston more through meet-ups (Doctorates without Borders), a career transitions work group through Harvard’s office of career services, and a group called IvyLife, which is part of LinkedIn. Through this last group I met people at the Fairbank center at Harvard and I may be presenting my research on Taiwan soon, and even joining the center as a scholar after getting my Ph.D. My mother-in-law returns to Bulgaria next Sunday, so I am trying to maximize my social networking in Boston before then. I have met a number of people in the non-profit community. One of them started an organization a few years ago that teaches business skills to juvenile offenders. Another started an organization 4 years ago that connects people for fun activities and social justice. Another started an organization about 20 years ago that takes volunteers to do projects around Massachusetts once a year. I have been connecting with a bunch of “spiritual” people online through Facebook. Just in the past couple months I connected with a minister who is affiliated with the Agape Church in Hollywood, which is run by Michael Beckwith. Through her I connected with a woman who has published a book about her conversations with Jesus Christ even though she is Muslim. I also connected with a business-woman in Seattle who has seen and interacted with “the other side” all her life. I have connected with an author of children’s books who just recently started talking to her “spirit guide” through her dreams and while awake to ask questions about spirituality and enlightenment. I’m not sure what to make of all of this yet, but everyone is fun to talk to, and it’s more fun than talking about political science and academia all the time.

Before I went to graduate school I didn’t really care about human rights because I saw them as unenforceable. I also wasn’t interested in studying Congress because I am not an Americanist. I was also pretty bored with American politics by that time after studying it so much in college. Well, my dissertation is now focusing on Human Rights in Congress.

I met with Prof. Andrew Polsky and Prof. Yan Sun at the end of June. As a result of that meeting, I dropped Professor Andrew Nathan, Professor Peter Liberman, and Professor Janice Bockmeyer from my committee. I added Prof. Charles Tien. I expect to defend in January. I replaced Prof. Sun with Prof. Polsky as my adviser. I’m taking a leave of absence for the Fall semester.

My original motivation for doing this dissertation was to demonstrate what Keck and Sikkink (Activists beyond borders, 1998) described as the “Boomerang Effect”: Groups in one country appeal to citizens of another through a Transnational Activist Network; these citizens pressure their own government to pressure the offending regime. This demonstration would help me give a more nuanced interpretation of the dominant state-centered model in international relations theory. I hoped, ideally, to demonstrate that this model applied to many countries as long as there was an immigrant group that was using the democratic processes in a host country to affect the foreign policy of that host country toward the home country and, in turn, change the policies of the home country. To demonstrate this model, I picked the Taiwan Independence Movement. They have a transnational network, and Taiwan pays close attention to U.S. foreign policy because it was a client state in the 1970s and 1980s.

In the past 2 years, my research has revealed the following facts:

1. Taiwan is not unique. Congress produced foreign policies toward many countries, usually focused on human rights.

2. The Taiwan Independence Movement, or, more accurately, the Taiwan Democracy Movement, is not the independent variable. Instead, Congress is the independent variable, with policy toward states like Taiwan constituting the dependent variable.

3. The period from 1970 to 1980 witnessed a shift in international relations and American domestic politics: In the post-Vietnam War environment Congress became more assertive, human rights issues superceded security issues, economic issues were tied to human rights, and members of Congress became entrepreneurs. This context allowed individual Representatives and Senators to focus on foreign policy issues that had no connection with the politics of their states or home districts and didn’t affect their re-election chances since nearly all of them had safe seats.

4. Taiwan is different from other targets of U.S. foreign policy. Unlike other countries, such as South Africa (Apartheid), Cambodia (the Khmer Rouge), El Salvador (The “death squads"), and similar countries with obvious human rights abuses, the Taiwanese Democracy Movement stayed influential, even as the key independence activists went back to Taiwan.

5. In nearly every case of Congress acting on a human rights issue, there were three things: (a) a catalytic, or focusing event that got the attention of members of Congress and/or their staff, (b) a motivated member of Congress, or congressional staffer, who decided to focus attention on the issue, (c) a transnational activist network that suddenly was given access to Congress because a “policy window” was opened. Within this policy window Congress held hearings on the specific events in the target country and produced legislation, sometimes even overriding presidential vetoes, that addressed the issues in the target country. This legislation sometimes had the desired effects.

6. The reason the Taiwanese are different is because in the case of the Gang of Four and their staff, nearly everyone had visited Taiwan, lived in Taiwan, had family in Taiwan, or some other personal connection, such as ideological commitment or loyalty to a Taiwanese friend. The Affective, emotional issues trumped the rational electoral and financial considerations.

Based on these facts, my dissertation is shifting focus. Recognizing that transnational activist networks are more often a tool used by Congress to advance specific policy, my research will focus on Congress, including the members and their staff. Recognizing the role that staff played in motivating the “Gang of Four”, my research will focus on entrepreneurial members of Congress and entrepreneurial staff members, especially in cases where the member of Congress are relatively new and inexperienced (Reps. Solarz and Leach) and the staff members are experts in a specific policy area and/or have worked in Congress for many more years than the members. When the staff have more expertise and experience than the member of Congress, it’s logical that the member of Congress will follow the lead of the staff more often than not.

This research will, ultimately, contribute to the literature and be a practical guide by demonstrating the relevance of biographical information and affective ties for both members of Congress and their staff in motivating Congressional activity. Members of Congress and their staff may spend formative years in a target country before entering Congress. They may marry people from the target country. They may have relatives from the target country. These affective, emotional bonds will likely be better predictors of Congressional behavior and foreign policy output than the rational electoral considerations based in a member’s district/state and efforts to win re-election. With this knowledge, scholars of Congress and U.S. foreign policy will have better explanations for American foreign policy output, and activist groups will have better ways of targeting sympathetic members of Congress. The activist groups may even find that the emotional, affective strategy is more effective than paying a professional lobbyist to interact with the member of Congress.

Theoretically, this research will provide the “missing link” in the literature on International Relations and foreign policy. This research will identify legislators as key producers of foreign policy, and it will help International Relations scholar to understand the personal motivations that drive legislators to spend time on specific foreign policy issues. With the right motivation, a specific member of Congress or a specific set of legislators in other countries can connect international events to domestic political and transnational activists. It takes a tiny fraction of Congress to pursue a foreign policy agenda, and thus it’s reasonable to expect that small groups of legislators in democratic countries can heavily influence their countries’ foreign policies with sufficient policy inputs from transnational activists.

Beyond the Ph.D., I have finally realized the problem I have with academia overall. I expected a high level in academic integration with the rest of the world so that I could do both theoretical work and practical work simultaneously, with practical work implementing lessons from theoretical work. My logic was simple: Professors do research on relevant problems that can be put into practice by the community. I wanted to be the source for theoretical and practical solutions within any community.

I have realized that the university “committed suicide” in the last 40 years, and that my expectations are not based on reality. It has gotten harder to get a Ph.D., and the value of the Ph.D. has plummeted because of oversupply. It’s harder to find a tenure-track job because the value of the Ph.D. has fallen. Once you find a tenure-track job, the effort required to get tenure (including publishing books and articles in peer-reviewed journals, serving on committees, teaching a heavy course load, performing service to the academic community, guiding students) is so great that your ability to interact with the community in a meaningful way is very limited until you get tenure. Even after you get tenure, there is little relationship between your scholarly work and your interaction with the community.

The difference between my expectation and reality is a huge gap, and I thus have to choose what I value more: trying to “go through the eye of the needle” to get tenure at a university, or interacting more with my community. Time is a big issue: 8 years of graduate work plus 5 years of post-doc positions plus 7 years of tenure-track work equals 20 years before I can really interact with the community, and I want to interact now. I’m just no longer patient to go through the layers of academia to accomplish what I really want to do. Moreover, I have discovered that I don’t have to go through those layers. Instead, I am now focusing on helping to abolish the university, at least in its current form.

I have develop the following categories for a scholar engaged in the community.

1. Activist

This person pursues short-term goals and medium-range goals to affect long-term improvement in an unjust system. These are people who start non-profit organizations to provide services to vulnerable populations, educate people about problems in their environment, and empower people to solve those problems.

2. Scholar

This person pursues the long-term goal of scholarship that may affect long-term improvement of an unjust system. The overall approach is critical, helping to dismantle the theoretical justifications and the analytical tools that support various forms of injustice. This person may study the effectiveness of strategic non-violent action within oppressive regimes, or the role of economic exchange mechanisms in depriving people of access to resources.

3. Scholar-Activist

This person pursues the long-term goal of scholarship that may affect long-term improvement in an unjust system while simultaneously taking part in short-term and medium-term activities that address acute crises. These are parallel activities with no coherence or integration. The scholar may find “truth” in the literature, but the reality on the ground will be so different as to make theory a poor tool for practice. Thus, what the scholar teaches in the classroom provides at best a theoretical foundation for understanding issues, but once he gets out of the classroom he is as powerful and capable as everyone else. His scholarship does not provide him with any edge in making change, except possibly in helping frame issues in the media and guiding the actions of organizations.

4. Activist-Scholar

This person takes part in short-term and medium-term activities that address acute crises, then writes a “first draft of history” account of the activities while connecting actions and results with theoretical arguments in literature to demonstrate the utility of theories. This person turns his life into a narrative that contributes to the formulation of Truth by interacting with theory – putting theories into practice and seeing how viable they are. Each publication advances the connection between theory and practice as demonstrated in the activist’s life, thus providing guidance on “best practices” for other activist-scholars.

Under these categories, the only way to bridge the gap between expectation and reality is to go into non-profit work, social work and social business in order to interact with the community. Thus, I plan to become an activist while working for non-profit organizations, and then re-enter academia as a scholar who uses activist material to animate scholarship.

I want to help change the model of education so that it is more open and easily accessible. My friend Clint Rogers got his Ph.D. in technologies for inter-cultural communication in Utah. He partnered with Stockholm University in the Spring to conduct a free online course that was paid for by the university. There were over 100 students from different parts of the world working in teams of 4 to complete online assignments. The lectures were online videos, accessed through the web site or through YouTube. All of the literature was online. The web site told you who was logged on at any given moment, like Facebook. My team created a Facebook page and then we used Skype to have group discussions across 4 different time zones. I was the team leader. One student was from California, another was from Nepal, another was from Thailand. Each person got credit through Stockholm University. We chatted on Facebook as well, but Skype was better for conference calls.

I recently learned of other examples of this, from the ground-up, on You Tube.

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YouTube 'professor' teaches the world - from his bedroom

Lisa M. Krieger San Jose Mercury News | Posted: Sunday, June 27, 2010 12:00 am |

Sal Khan, 33, the most popular educator on YouTube, delivers an algebra lecture from his bedroom closet in Mountain View, Calif. "I'm the Dear Abby" of math problems," he says.

SAN JOSE, Calif. - From a tiny closet in Mountain View, Calif., Sal Khan is educating the globe for free.

His 1,516 videotaped mini-lectures - on topics ranging from simple addition to vector calculus and Napoleonic campaigns - are transforming the former hedge fund analyst into a YouTube sensation, reaping praise from even reluctant students across the world.

"I'm starting a virtual school for the world, teaching things the way I wanted to be taught," explains Khan, 33, the exuberant founder and sole faculty member of the nonprofit Khan Academy, run out of his small ranch house, which he shares with his wife and infant son.

Khan has never studied education and has no teaching credentials. His brief and low-tech videos, created in the corner of his bedroom, are made with a $200 Camtasia Recorder, $80 Wacom Bamboo Tablet and a free copy of SmoothDraw3 on a home PC.

But every day, his lectures are viewed 70,000 times - double the entire student body of UC Berkeley. His viewers are diverse, ranging from rural preschoolers to Morgan Stanley analysts to Pakistani engineers. Since its inception in 2006, the Khan Academy website has recorded more than 16 million page views.

At a time when conventional education is under stress, his project has caught the attention of educators and venture capitalists such as John Doerr, who just invested $100,000 to help pay Khan's salary.

Jason Fried, CEO of tech company 37signals, said he invested in Khan's nonprofit because "the next bubble to burst is higher education. It's too expensive. It's too much one-size-fits-all. This is an alternative way to think about teaching - simple, personal, free and moving at your own pace."

With a computer science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an MBA from Harvard, Khan settled into a lucrative position at Sand Hill Road's Wohl Capital Management, while his wife studied medicine at Stanford.

Then, his young cousin Nadia started struggling in math. In afternoon long-distance conference calls to Louisiana, Khan taught her "unit conversions" using Yahoo Doodle as a shared notepad. He wrote JavaScripts to generate random algebra problems.

Soon Nadia's brothers and other far-flung family members wanted help, too. Frustrated by scheduling tutoring sessions around work, soccer schedules and different time zones, he simply posted his talks on YouTube.

"Then somebody searched YouTube for 'greatest common divisor,'" he said with a laugh. Web traffic now soars 10 percent a month.

His approach is learn-as-you-go. Students can start anywhere in the curriculum. Stumped? Simply stop the video and repeat. He's off camera and conversational. Lessons are bite-size. The modules offer immediate feedback - what's right, what's wrong. There's conceptual progression.

Some lessons - in math, computer science and physics - are spontaneous, as Khan works from memory. Other topics, such as cellular respiration or the Haitian revolution, are more scripted. He immerses himself in material, roaming the aisles of the used bookstore BookBuyers. When stuck on a question, he calls experts.

"I just ponder things, until they're clear," he said.

So clear that Felix Thibodeau, 11, of Wilmington, N.C., can enjoy math.

"I think he rocks. I'm studying pre-algebra and I love it," he said in an e-mail message to the San Jose Mercury News.

Saudi dentist Fawaz Sait wrote: "He deserves a Nobel Prize."

It's not possible to verify the accuracy of each video. But in their testimonials, students say Khan helped them master the material - particularly math.

"I learned more about calculus in the last few hours than in the whole of the last semester at university," said Derek Hoy, majoring in geological science/geophysics at Australia's University of Queensland. "I was almost ready to change majors, because I wasn't understanding a lot of the content but am now up to speed."

Khan laughed. "I'm the 'Dear Abby' of math problems. But if you understand something, shouldn't you be able to explain it? Isn't that the whole point?"

Online

Sal Khan's topics include math, chemistry, physics, biology, finance and history. Several modules cover material in the California Standards Test in Algebra I and II. See them at www.khanacademy.org

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Based on my experience and this example, I have developed this vision for 21st-century higher education:

First, educational institutions will use Social Medial to enhance regular course work. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other types of Social Media work wonders for classroom interaction between students and between students and teachers. Course content can be communicated through Facebook by turning a class into a closed Facebook group. Twitter is already being used to conduct conversations on classes and conference panels by displaying Twitter and hash tags behind the speakers. YouTube is already being used to broadcast lectures.

As universities engage in more cost-cutting, Social Media will start to replace the classroom: Professors will conduct classes only online. Harvard is doing things along those lines through the Extension school, and many colleges have online-only classes. As students get used to this online environment and interaction, universities won't be able to justify the costs of maintaining buildings, and they will start looking for professors who are well-versed in online instruction, especially as more students sign up for it. Online instruction liberates a student from being at a specific location at a specific time without sacrificing pedagogical values like good lectures (powerpoint), discussions (text chatting, video-conferencing). The university system is just too expensive to maintain, and university endowments have fallen dramatically in the last couple years because of the financial crisis. Economic logic dictates that departments must start investing in teachers who understand how to properly use social media. In about 20 years, more classes will be taught through social media than in physical spaces. In about 50 years professors will start teaching classes as part of their own initiatives, conducting "webinars", no matter what universities do. I bet some are even doing that now. Instead of being paid by the university, the professors will be paid by a mass student base, say 10,000 students pay $10 each for one hour of class each week ($100,000/class). Multiply that times 4 classes and professors can make much more money than the university is able to pay them.

The only issue left now is accreditation. The university is the layer between the student’s knowledge/skills and employment. The class provides credit and a grade to the student based on completed work, and the university provides a diploma. If the classroom becomes obsolete, the university must ask the professor to put all the knowledge into a testable format that will allow the students to take the test to demonstrate knowledge of the material. This is how standardized tests, such as the GMAT, GRE, LSAT and MCAT work, but they give a score instead of a grade. Professors must be able to take their knowledge standards to the state so that a student can take a College Equivalent Exam, which will serve the same function as a GED. The state can then recognize the mastery of knowledge, paying the professor directly for assembling the material instead of paying the university first in order to pay the professor. The university can then review the test results and stamp a “brand” name on the diploma for an extra fee. Thus, for instance, an individual who wants to demonstrate mastery in economics would study the books assigned by the state-employed professor and would take a test on the material whenever he is ready. After passing the test, the student would pay a fee for the university name to be put on the diploma, in the same way that corporations simply put the corporate label on products made oversees. The student would either pay more for a more prestigious label, or his higher score on the exam would qualify him for a more prestigious label.

Countdown: At most 120 days until submission

I am going on vacation to North Carolina with my wife today after sending new chapters to my adviser and a member of my committee. The last 2 months have been very eventful for my dissertation work. There have been some changes in scheduling, hence the changed countdown number. In addition, I have finally developed a game plan for my future after completing my Ph.D. This game plan corresponds with my work in Social Entrepreneurship.

First, the developments. I have just completed the "fun" part of my dissertation research, after some innovative research on my part. As I mentioned in a previous post, it became obvious to me that Rep. Steve Solarz (D-NY, 1974-1992) was a key to my dissertation, but I had not been able to contact him through traditional methods, such as going through his secretaries at various organizations. About a month ago, after learning about events in Taiwan and the United States during the 1970s and early 1980s that sparked congressional hearings, I decided to do a Lexis-Nexis search for all news articles mentioning Solarz, Leach, Pell, Kennedy (The Gang of Four), Trong Chai, Mark Chen, and Peng Ming Min (the Taiwan Independence Activists) between 1970 and 2000. I had to process hundreds of news articles before I found some key articles about critical events: The Kaoshiung Incident in December 1979, the death of a professor at Carnegie-Mellon University in 1981, the death of an author in 1984. Finally, at the end of 1989 I found an article about Solarz's fundraising prowess in tapping into immigrant groups: Taiwanese-Americans, Indian-Americans, etc. He was apparently the first House member to ever deliberately target immigrant groups by appealing to their concerns over transnational politics: Help me win re-election and I will help address issues concerning your home country. At the end of the article I found a quote from his spokesman, Robert Hathaway, whom I spoke with in 2006 as I was trying to figure out a topic for my research. I emailed Mr. Hathaway, asking to speak with him about Solarz, and he sent me Solarz's personal email. Within 48 hours I was talking with Solarz. I learned that Solarz had completed his memoir and that I could use it for my dissertation. So, he emailed me a 300+ page memoir (which came to 180 pages in Times New Roman, 12-pt font). I spent two weeks reading it.

And what a read it was! Solarz was in Congress starting in 1975 as one of the Watergate Babies. He describes his early life – family and friends, high school, college, graduate school, politics. In the first 30 pages I essentially learned how to run for and win public office. Then he describes the New York delegation that he joined and their activities at the start of Congress. He mentions the Subcommittee Bill of Rights, which allowed him to become Chair of the Subcommittee on Africa after just 4 years in the House, and then become Chair of the Asia and Pacific Subcommittee. For the rest of the book I learned about his travels and meetings all over the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and Asia, including North and South Korea, The Philippines, Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam, China, and Cambodia. He goes into the politics and history of every region and country, the key leaders and issues, and his role- if he had any – in each country. In short, I learned what is possible if you are a member of the House of Representatives, from probably the most-traveled representative in the last 60 years.

After that, I knew I had to obtain records of congressional hearings. The Congressional Records web site includes records only until 1990, so I had to learn where to access the records on micro fiche – a process that I knew would be very, very time-consuming. Fortunately, I learned that Northeastern University, where I taught for the Spring semester, had a micro fiche room. I went there and, after a couple days stumbling around, learned how to access Congressional hearings through Lexis-Nexis Congressional. I found every hearing I needed, saving me probably 2 weeks of searching for and scanning micro fiche by hand. Just recently, I also obtained free software that removed the security protections from the PDF files, thus letting me copy-and-paste instead of manually copying by typing. Since there are 2000+ pages of Congressional hearings from 1979 to 1989, that’s a great time-saving development.

In addition to obtaining Solarz’s material, I interviewed Coen Blaauw, the director of Public Relations at FAPA, for about 90 minutes. As a result, I am not able to start editing everything together to finish the remaining chapters.

Now for the schedule change. I thought 2 months ago that I had to finish everything by April 30. Then I learned that CUNY rules require a 30-day waiting period between completing the final draft and the defense date so that the committee can read everything. There also had to be a 2-week period between the defense and the filing date to complete the paper-work. I had thought it was the other way around: File and then defend. This reversed sequence meant that I had to finish everything by March 15 so that we could schedule the defense for April 15 and leave time for the paperwork. I knew that was unrealistic, but the problem was the timing: This is my last semester to be in “good standing” since I have been a student at CUNY for 16 semesters. However, I spoke with the administrative office and learned that I could get my degree in September if I defended during the summer. Thus, I am now aiming to defend by July 25, the day my mother-in-law returns to Bulgaria.

Finally, I have adjusted my plan for what to do after the Ph.D. I’ve calculated that in order to be able to integrate my professional life, my spiritual life, and my personal life within academia, I would have to wait about 5 years to get published just so I could get a tenure-track job, and then wait another 5 to 7 years so that I could get tenure. Once I had tenure – in about 10-12 years, I could start doing media appearances again and working with non-profits. However, between now and then I would have to be focused completely on publishing, first to get the tenure-track job and then to get tenure. And this is after already putting in 8 years to get the Ph.D. So, I have thought of it this way: I can wait 20 years overall (8 + 12) to do the things I really want to do, or I can start almost immediately to build a career for myself that involves social entrepreneurship and media appearances, while sustaining my family and teaching classes, but not shooting for a tenure-track position anywhere. Or, to put it more succinctly, up to now, for the past 3 years, my physical needs, my personal needs, and my intellectual/spiritual needs have been largely in sync. Once I finish my Ph.D., pursuing a tenure-track position anywhere will throw these things out of sync, and the only way to resolve this tension will be to give up a professional academic career for about a decade while I get established in Social Entrepreneurship and media while I help raise my family.

However, I plan to get back into academia after I get established, but on my terms instead of as a pure academic. For example, I could easily target teaching positions at small liberal arts colleges, working either in a political science department or the business department, or even leading a research center on Social Entrepreneurship and non-profits. In those capacities I could also recruit people who have real-world experience integrating their theoretical knowledge with their lives to start social businesses and non-profits. In this way I could be a force for change within academia: By my own example, I could recruit people who start out with real life experience first instead of specialized academic knowledge first, and then use that real-life experience to inform the academic research, thus making the research more relevant to our lives and more accurate as well. I would start a professional academic career about ten years after all of my colleagues who also received political science Ph.D.s and published books and articles, but I would arrive at a position of influence within the university before my colleagues because I would have the real-world experience that they lacked.

Thus, my research would be better, more relevant to practitioners, and more theoretically robust, and I would be a better teacher as a result. Hence, I would be a great candidate for tenure after a few years of publishing. I would be 49 or 50 around that time (34 + 10 years as a Social Entrepreneur and 5 years as a tenure-track professor = 49), which is exactly the time that I planned to run for my first public office. This makes much more sense as a professional sequence than trying to get a tenure-track position first. I don’t want to be an ordinary academic; I want to help academia become a citizen in the community again. However, I recognize that people who start out as academics and then become citizens in the community cannot be citizens while they are constantly publishing. Thus, I have to demonstrate that it’s better to become a member of the community first, and then transition into academia, instead of starting in academia and then entering the community. A group of professors with real-world experience and ties to the community through Social Entrepreneurship will be much more relevant to the community’s needs than professors with only theoretical knowledge who are merely on leave from an academic position for a couple years to work in the community. If I am going to be a professor at all, an activist-scholar is exactly the type of professor I want to be, instead of a scholar-activist who publishes before entering the community. It’s time to help the university enter the 21st century and become a member of the community once again!

Countdown: 66 days until submission

OK, so I haven't been keeping up with these daily blog posts to keep track of my dissertation-completion progress as I intended. That's mainly because I was busy being a stay-at-home dad between the end of July and the end of January. I had almost no time during the day to write these posts. However, I have still made tremendous progress toward completing my dissertation since the end of July, and that's the important part. As a result, I will write more than three paragraphs to catch people up on my progress.

I have made progress in three areas of my dissertation: (1) Interviewing key people, (2) Learning what actually happened during the period I am researching, and (3) Modifying my conceptual framework and theoretical approach to analyze what actually happened. (Interviewing key people) I talked with Jim Leach, former Republican Congressman from Iowa, back in 2008. I talked with Michael Fonte, former Policy Analyst with FAPA, in October 2008. Between then and July 2009 I spoke with a number of professors about how to best understand the topic. After July I spoke with Cindy Fogelman, who use to work on Rep. Leach's staff. Then I talked with Richard Bush, who worked on Stephen Solarz's staff (he was a Democratic Congressman from New York). I spoke with Robert Ross, a China Scholar at Boston College, and Robert Sutter, a China Scholar at Georgetown University. I spoke with Nancy Soderberg, who worked on Senator Kennedy's staff. I spoke with Edward Friedman, who worked with Rep. Solarz. I also found audio presentations of Fulton Armstrong, who worked with Rep. Leach, and Thomas Hughes, who was Senator Claiborne Pell's (R-RI) Chief of Staff.

What Actually Happened: I have learned that the causal direction is the opposite of what I thought. I had assumed, like most American scholars, that an interest group organizes, builds strength, and then puts pressure on elected officials to do its bidding. Thus, I thought of Congress as a passive organization. It turns out that Congress, specifically Rep. Solarz, was the organizer, and that this has precedents. After the Taiwan Relations Act passed, members of Congress and their staff who had personal connections and interest in Asia, human rights, and democracy, started to look for ways to make the US-Taiwan relationship more substantive. The Gang of Four (Leach, Solarz, Pell and Kennedy) decided to use their positions to relate directly to the people and government of the Republic of China on Taiwan in order to convince government officials on Taiwan to promote democracy and human rights. Sen. Pell had a great relationship with Mark Chen, one of the presidents of FAPA. Rep. Solarz had a relationship with Trong Chai, a founder of FAPA. Rep. Leach had a relationship with Peng Ming-Min, another FAPA president. Sen. Kennedy had a friendship with Kenjohn Wang, who helped buy FAPA's real estate and organized a fundraiser for Kennedy's presidential campaign in 1980. FAPA became the mediator between these politicians and their staff on one hand, and Taiwanese organizations and politicians on the other hand. What made FAPA the mediator? Unlike other Taiwanese-American organizations, it knew the proper language for getting along with Congress, and its leaders had good relationships with the politicians and their staff.

So, I have been forced to amend my conceptual framework to account for this reality. Instead of using Social Capital to explain how a small group of Taiwanese-Americans managed to be so influential in Congress, I am using Political Capital to explain how a small number of politicians in Congress (4) used their subcommittee positions to hold hearings and press conferences, and pass resolutions that made news in Taiwan and influenced Taiwan's government. The theory has also changed. Instead of thinking that any group can succeed just by using Social Capital in the right way, I am now arguing that Political Capital is part of a combination of factors that must occur simultaneously to have the desired impact. These factors include: (1) The political and international environment, which makes it easier or more difficult for specific groups or members of Congress to get a hearing and pass legislation; (2) The qualities of the specific politicians, including their level of commitment to a specific issue and their influence in Congress; (3) The effectiveness of interest groups, which includes social capital, financial contributions, and high-quality information presented at hearings or to Congressional staff. When all three of these variables combine, you get a policy output in the form of a resolution or a law.

This happened in two similar cases: Congressional policy toward South Africa, especially passing a sanctions law over the veto of President Reagan in 1986. Transnational ties connected members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) to Apartheid in South Africa. In this case it was the African Affairs subcommittee instead of the Asian and Pacific Affairs Subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, but the same person, Stephen Solarz, was involved. The difference between this case and the case of Taiwan is that the CBC had been trying since 1969 to get a sanctions bill passed, without success. Congressman Charles Diggs (D-MI), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Africa of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, had to literally start a grassroots movement to get constituents to put pressure on members of the CBC before there was enough momentum to pass the legislation. In the case of Taiwan, FAPA already had the grassroots movement, making Congress' job much easier and faster.

The other case is Cambodia. Solarz was involved here as well, along with Sen. Pell. Congress passed a law promoting democracy in Cambodia, and Rep. Solarz was a critical part of that process. However, Cambodian-Americans were ineffective because they were disorganized, and lacked money and votes.

So, I have learned that you don't really need a grassroots organization as long as you have Congressional representatives with a great deal of influence in Congress (political capital) who chair the appropriate subcommittees and work in an environment that is very favorable to their specific causes. You need at least two out of the three elements for policy outputs. If you have the right environment and the effective interest group, but no obvious Congressional champion, the interest group can easily find a champion by saying they have the means to remove him from office. If you have the Congressional champion and the interest group, but not the right environment, the policy output is still possible, but it will take longer as the political entrepreneur and the interest group slowly build support. If you have the right environment and the Congressional champion, without a supporting interest group, you can get policy out put if the politician is committed to a region or a specific ideology, but the long-term support for the specific region will vanish after the initial success.

Finally, in addition to all these discoveries, I have been talking to friends and colleagues about what it means to be a professor. I have discovered what my likely path will be. I know now that the only reason why I want to become a tenured professor at a college is to build credibility for my activities outside of the college. I would much rather use my knowledge and skills to help various non-profit groups and have my own television or radio show than teach 3-4 classes a semester and publish in journals no one reads just for the sake of getting tenure. If i could teach, publish, help non-profit groups and have my own TV show, that would be ideal. But there isn't enough time in a day, week, or month, to do all of those well. This is especially the case because being a tenure-track professor is so much more than just teaching classes and publishing. There's advising student groups; serving in various committees; appearing at department and college functions, and generally being in the academic community. I would love to do all those things if, and only if, I know that the college I teach at is a critical member of the larger community, and that decisions made on committees affect the residents of a town or city. However, I know that no matter where I teach the college will most likely not be a major force in the larger community, and thus the activities of the committee and the student body will only affect the college itself. If I am going to serve on committees (and I know I will have to eventually) I would much rather do it in an environment that I know will have an impact, such as a city council, a state legislature, or even the US Congress.

A key conversation has really impacted me. I spoke with Maggie Gray, who teaches at Adelphi University after getting her Ph.D. in 2006. She's a migrant labor activist, and she even met her husband at a labor rally. Her dissertation is on migrant labor and transnational labor organizations. Thus, she fits my model of the scholar-activist. She told me, point-blank, that if I apply to a university I can emphasize the number and variety of classes I have taught (40 at 13 colleges as of Spring 2010), and my interests in helping the university be an active member of the larger community, through such tools as service-learning. However, I must not say that I am a scholar-activist in any application letter because it will be tossed out right away. Some colleges, she said, do have faculty who are scholar-activists, but they emphasize the scholarship. Most important, she said that her activist days have been put on hold because she is so busy being a college professor, and she doesn't have the time anymore to do those activities. But (and this is what really caught my ear), if I am an activist to any extent in a college environment, I really have to pay attention to whether it will count toward tenure or not. This is because, until I get tenure I really have to pay attention to that tenure clock (about 6 years at most colleges). That startled me: An activist turned scholar told me essentially to use activism to get tenure instead of using tenure to become a better activist.

So, after thinking about it, I decided that I have been putting my practitioner abilities on hold for about 8 years while I have been in graduate school, and so now I really need to apply my knowledge in specific environments in order to develop my skills as an activist. I could wait another 6 years to get tenure and then become an activist, but I don't want to wait any more. I want to go work for the government and/or non-profit organizations so that I can apply what I have learned immediately. More important, I already know there is a low probability of anyone reading my dissertation after I complete it. I will have to wait at least 2 more years to publish my first journal article, and I know even fewer people will likely read that. I need to complete this dissertation to get my Ph.D, which will make me more employable and credible for the things I want to do with my life. A journal article won't add value to my life any any way, though it will add value to my professional prospects. So, I would like to go immediately into a job that I know will "make a difference".

One example I have found is Jay Winik. He completed his Ph.D. at Yale and wrote his dissertation on Congressional policy toward Cambodia. he then worked for the government and actually wrote some key policies regarding Cambodia. After that he left public service and is now writing highly-regarded history books that make the New York Times' Best Sellers list. I am thinking that this may be a model for my activities, except instead of writing history books I could fulfill my dream of having a TV show that helps people to become social entrepreneurs.

On this last front, I have had some great developments. I am now teaching a class at Northeastern University on Corporate Social Responsibility. I have decided that instead of aiming for a teaching position in a political science department at a college, I would make a better fit at a business college or a graduate school of business, where I could help develop classes and entire programs that train the students to be social entrepreneurs. I have already looked at Harvard Business School and discovered that they employed professors with Political Science Ph.D.s and, most important, they have an annual conference on Social Entrepreneurship and Social Innovation. I would love to go teach at a college like that. So, I have decided that if I can find such a college, I will have no problem going on the tenure-track there. I know that after getting tenure I will be able to turn the college into a producer of social entrepreneurs, and the business school into a place where employers and managers learn how to implement humane policies. Then, I could use my credential as a business school professor to teach people how to become social entrepreneurs!

Countdown: 291 days until submission

There have been three interesting developments. I am making my way through the Shu dissertation. I decided to start talking with my friends in academia about university life and obligations. One of them is a professor at Rutgers who was a graduate student at Harvard during my last couple years there as an undergraduate. I called him to set up an appointment to talk and then looked up his dissertation: "The American Regime and Black Consciousness of Africa." Conceptually, it deals with diasporas, collective identity formation, and mechanisms for affecting U.S. foreign policy. Its subject is the African Diaspora, but I could easily apply it to Taiwan. It also deals with trans-territoriality, which in my parlance means transnational activism. Thus, it is a great match for my research, and I had no idea that this fit was possible until I started to think about who could tell me what it is like to be a tenure-track professor. I am also contacting other professors I know who have graduated from my program or who I have interacted with socially. I don't want to get scared about academia until I know what it entails. Right now, I only know that I don't want to do committee work. But maybe committee work, as onerous as it may be, is balanced by better activities. I have to find out. Another interesting development comes from my stepmother. I asked her, literally, does your job (as an adoptions examiner who makes recommendations to judges on possible adoptions) allow you to make a difference in people's lives? She said yes, because she has built a reputation that makes her valuable in her professional community for the advice she gives. I told her that I would like to advise people and, ideally, be a mediator and peace-maker. So, one of the examples I will probably follow is Nobel Peace Prize Winner Ralph Bunche, who received his Ph.D. from Harvard and helped mediate peace between the Israelis and Palestinians in 1950. I would love to do something like that. Finally, after reading through the Shu Dissertation a bit, I have learned a great deal about the connections between academia and politics through the life of Peng Ming-min.

The section on Peng Ming-min deals with how he developed his ardent Formosan nationalism. This is important for my research because I have to find out the connections among the different activists, and Peng was one of the first, if not THE first activist to travel abroad promoting Taiwan Independence.

Reading about Peng has clarified my concerns about academia. I want to teach and write, learn and grow as a scholar, but I NOT want to get trapped in the confines of the university. I don't want to be ONLY an academic. What worries me is that so many of the academics I meet seem perfectly satisfied being only academics. It seems the burdens and obligations of supporting a university take all the time they would have to become scholar-activists. I want to be active in the media, in social entrepreneurship (social businesses and non-profits), while also advising politicians and being one myself at some point. The issue I am having is whether academia is a necessary stepping stone to everything else I want to do, or whether a Ph.D. will be my ticket. Do I have to learn how to navigate institutions in order to create organizations, or can I attract sufficient help (in terms of investment and partners) just with a Ph.D.? I worry that the answer will be "you have to learn to navigate institutions as a professor" in order to prove that you have what it takes to start organizations or rise up in government. I wish the answer were as simple as "finish the Ph.D. then do what you want", but I have a hunch that isn't the case given the oversupply of Ph.D. The truth is I cannot know the answer unless I actually try to do the stuff I want with the Ph.D. alone. What may happen is that I will try to do things outside of institutions, with limited success, and then I will join an institution to establish a professional foundation, followed by publications of academic and popular books that will allow me to leave academia. I don't think there is any single path to the activities I want to do, so the best answer for me is probably: see what happens.

Countdown: 292 days until submission

I have started my regimen of reading 50 pages per day of each dissertation. I have, happily discovered that reading dissertations is not an onerous and time-consuming burden, like reading journal articles. Since dissertations are double-spaced and crammed with footnotes and charts, finishing one page takes about a minute. I am reading "Transforming National Identity in the Diaspora." The introduction chapter was easy to finish because I know most of the background of Taiwan and the Taiwan Independence Movement in the United States. I am now reading about the life of Peng Ming-Min, a key activist who advocated Taiwanese independence in many other countries (Japan, Canada, Sweden) before settling in the US and becoming the second president of FAPA. At the rate of 1 page page minute, I should be able to read 50 pages in an hour if I have no distractions. So, I may increase my daily reading to 100 pages per day (90 minutes) so that I can finish by the beginning of October.

Peng Ming-Min is a key part of my research because he was one of the earliest advocates of Taiwan Independence and he went back to Taiwan to run for president in 1996. The period I am looking at is the formation of FAPA, between 1977 and 1981. The key event was the official recognition of China by the United States in 1979. This caused a problem for Taiwan because the immgration quota from China to the US, which previously covered only Taiwan, was now shared by Taiwan and China, thus severely limiting the quota for Taiwanese immigrants. TIM activists wanted to get a separate quota for Taiwan, and so they went to the state department and managed to get this change. Also in 1979 the US passed the Taiwan Relations Act, which held that, despite the diplomatic recognition of the PRC, relations with Taiwan would remain. Rep. Jim Leach was a newly elected Republican Congressman from Iowa, and he inserted an amendment to the TRA advocating democracy on Taiwan. Once the TIM succeeded in changing the immigration quota, they search for congressional representatives who would be good allies for their cause. Rep. Leach was an obvious ally. However, he would only work with them to promote democracy on Taiwan, not to promote independence, which he knew would provoke war between the PRC and Taiwan, and would likely involve the U.S. So, a key element of my research here is how the TIM was able to frame its cause as a pro-democracy issue involving human rights while simultaneously maintaining a strong connection with independence activists like Peng Ming-min.

I have begun to look for insider accounts of academic life. One of the great things about the Internet is that, in addition to having free access to journal papers and dissertations as a graduate student, I also can look at public blogs (or weblogs, as I prefer to call them), and I can find them easily through links provided by a friend of mine, Arbitrista, who operates The Third Estate (www.third-estate.blogspot.com). Through his links I found Dr. Crazy, a tenured Assistant Professor at some university. I discovered this post, in which he contemplates a second book, and it disturbed me a great deal. I found two great objections. First, the reasons for writing a book were reduced to (a) getting Full Professor and (b) the inherent interest of the topic. The first is an instrumentalist perspective, the second is an intrinsic value perspective. What was missing is the perspective I prefer: What do people need to know (what does society need to make progress) and what book would meet that need? The instrumentalist perspective, aimed at making more money, cheapens the value of the book. The instrinsic value perspective makes the book self-serving, not serving a higher cause. I want the higher cause, the noble purpose, to orient my writing. What strikes me with horror is that I will likely be surrounded by other academics who lack any notion of higher purpose, and in order to get promoted the department will, as Dr. Crazy describes in his post, consider only my productivity within a set time limit (how many journal articles or books I publish over a set number of years). My criterion for promotion is the impact of the work on the field, and also on society, and you cannot measure that with productivity assessments. So, I am thinking that perhaps I should focus on getting a university job that is oriented toward non-profits while still teaching. I really do not want a tenure clock ticking in my life, or any clock for that matter. I can, of course, produce lots of material very quickly, but I don't want to be in an environment where everyone ignores what I care about the most: The application of important ideas for the purpose of helping people and improving the world.

Countdown: 293 days until submission

Ever since I passed my First Exam in January 2006, I have been collecting journal articles and dissertations thaat I thought were relevant to my topics of interest: Social Capital, Asia, Ethnic Lobbies, US Foreign Policy, etc. Once I passed my Second Exam (my proposal was approved), I slowed down on collecting articles and dissertations as I focused on actually doing interviews. Over the past year I have interviewed three types of people: Taiwanese Independence Activists, who may or may not have been associated with the Formosan Association for Public Affairs; People associated with the Gang of Four (Rep. Leach, Rep. Solarz, Sen. Kennedy, Sen. Pell); Academics who study the topics of interest I mentioned above. The problem I have been having is the problem every researcher has: How do you know when you have accumulated enough information from the "right" people, and what constitutes the "right"people? Should one emphasize quantity (interviewing people even if they are only tangentially related to the topic) or quality (people who are directly related to the topic)? My wife has been emphasizing the quantity ever since a friend of mine from the same program (who now teaches as a tenure-track professor in the CUNY system) told me about the 25 people threshold. So, I have been trying to get to that number, regardless of the precise relationship to my topic. However, over this weekend I compiled the dissertations I collected over the past 3 years, and most of them over the past couple weeks. I have found some critical dissertations that now point me in the right direction in terms of quality. Specifically, I found this dissertation: "Transforming National Identity in the Diaspora." It is a collection of biographies of the key Taiwan Independence Activists, including those who were critical in the formation of FAPA, serving as the president of FAPA in the first few years that I am studying. Now I don't have to be blind as I search for interview subjects.

My question, as I have explained it to novices a few times, is this: How did the Taiwan Independence Movement, which is a transnational movement with activists in different parts of the world, manage to create a grassroots lobby in the United States that in a short period of time (10 years) overcame the obstacles of limited financial power and voting power to become the #2 lobby in Congress (after AIPAC, the Jewish American Lobby)? This question is important because the model it represents is becoming very important for people in domestic politics and international relations. People from country A (The Republic of China on Taiwan, in this case) settle in the US (country B), and, after a few decades manage to accumulate enough money and followers to place pressure on the United States Congress to, in turn, place pressure on the government of country A to change in some fundamental way (in this case, Taiwan liberalized politically, ending 4 decades of martial law and no opposition parties). The people leaving are usually exiles who intend to go back to country A once the changes are made, and that is true in this case as well. But the key issue I am examining is: How do these people even get to the point of organizing sufficiently to create a lobby that successfully applies pressure to American leaders? More precisely, why do some groups succeed (Jewish Americans, Cuban Americans, Taiwanese Americans) while others fail? Are there lessons that American-born citizens can learn from this process?

After counting all the pages of 28 dissertations (19 of which are relevant to my topic, the others are written by people I know, like my adviser, and thus serve as models for my dissertation, or written by famous authors) I have calculated that I have 7,893 pages to read. if I read 50 pages per day, I will be finished by January, giving me enough time to use the information to structure my research. So, I am looking at a much smoother path to completion and submission by April 30. That should excite me but, as I have been telling my mother and other people recently, this actually scares me a great deal. First, I am confronted with the probability that no one will read my dissertation unless I publish it as books and journal articles, and, even if I do that, I will never reach the thousands, or millions of people, that I want to reach. Second, I am confronted with the lack of connection between my dissertation topic and any career moves I make. If I had gone to law school, medical school, or business school I know that there would be a direct connection between what I studied and what I will do in my career. That connection seems to be absent in academia. I have never once heard a professor talk about his or her dissertation topic, and I have never seen a CV for a professor that showed a connection between dissertation topic and their job 10, 20, or 30 years later. I want a connection, and I know that will not happen. Finally, and most dreadfully, the structure of academia turns me off. What I want most in a career is to work on creative, collaborative teams, ideally in the same office, or at least in the same general location. The teams should also, ideally, consist of people who understand me as well as I understand them. But academia consists of lone academics who are specialists in their field. I don't want to be a specialist. I want to be on a team that specializes. Teams exist in the sciences, in law firms, in corporations, in sports, and in the military, but not in the social sciences or the humanities. As a result of these three problems, I am leaning more toward creating my own organizations, structured around important causes, using the knowledge I gather from the dissertation writing process, and developing teams that I work with daily.

Countdown: 294 days until submission

Today I received my first fellowship check from the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange. The next check will arrive after Jan. 1, 2010. The deadline for submitting my dissertation to the Graduate Center of the City University of New York is April 30, 2010. Graduation day is May 27, 2010. I will receive more fellowship money from the AGEP (Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate) Program in September. I am thus contractually obligated to complete my disseration by April 30. In addition, Spring 2010 is the 4th semester after passing my 2nd exam (proposal phase), which is the limit for the Graduate Center. In short, I absolutely have to submit my dissertation by April 30.

That gives me 294 days to go through the required steps. I will be staying at home, taking care of my 3-year-old daughter and my infant son during that time. My daughter will be going to summer school and then regular school during the Fall Semester. This will give me "lots" of time to write the dissertation. That seems like a lot of time, but with two kids and a house to manage, a day goes by in a flash. A week seems more like a day. This means that I have to have a way to keep track of time, meaning working without letting too much time pass. This is the reason I started this blog. Without it, I will have a much more difficult time completing my dissertation by April 30, 2010.

For this inaugural post, I will describe the steps I intend to take daily toward completion of my dissertation. I will write three paragraphs, as I am in this post. I will include the activities I am engaging (the books, dissertations, papers, web sites, interviews) to complete the disseration. I will write about one significant step per day. I will write about the subject matter itself: The formation of the Formosan Association for Public Affairs as the grassroots lobby of the Taiwan Independence Movement from 1977 to 1987, and the corresponding changes on Congressional policy toward the Republic of China on Taiwan. Finally, I will share my thoughts on the nature of the All-But-Dissertation Phase that every graduate student goes through to complete the dissertation.