Distinguished Professor of History Ervand Abrahamian has co-authored a book entitled Inventing the Axis of Evil (The New Press, 2004). The book describes the politics of Iran, North Korea, and Syria and analyzes why these three have come to be called "the Axis of Evil." Abrahamian authored the chapter on Iran; Bruce Cummings of the University of Chicago and Moshe Moaz of Brandeis wrote the chapters on North Korea and Syria, respectively. Turan Bali (Economics and Finance) co-authored the forthcoming articles "Does Idiosyncratic Risk Really Matter?" (with N. Cakici, X. Yan, and Z. Zhang) for the Journal of Finance and "Value at Risk and Expected Stock Returns" (with N. Cakici) for Financial Analysts Journal. He also co-authored a chapter for the book Intelligent Hedge Fund Investing (Risk Publications): "Alternative Approaches to Estimating VaR for Hedge Fund Portfolios" (with S. Gokcan). Bali will be presenting the paper "Asymmetric Crime Cycles" for the American Economic Association's 2005 Annual Meeting in January. Management's Moshe Banai (together with William Reisel of St. John's University) has recently published the results of a study that tested the relationships between control mechanisms, such as leadership, job design, and performance appraisal, and workers' alienation in Cuba. The study, "A Test of Control—Alienation Theory Among Cuban Workers," appeared in Management Research. It captured the responses of 327 workers surveyed anonymously. The results suggest that Western management control mechanisms have the potential of reducing alienation, while a worker's job performance appraisal does not influence alienation in communist Cuba. It is one of the first empirical studies of workers' attitudes in Cuba. Last April, Carol Berkin (History) chaired and participated in a Historical Perspectives Panel at the Fordham Law School conference "Second Amendment and the Future of Gun Regulation: Historical, Legal, Policy and Cultural Perspectives." She was also one of the commentators for the upcoming historical television documentary Benedict Arnold. Her new book, America's Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for Independence (Knopf, 2004), was the subject of talks she gave at York College and the Sorosis Club in March and the Philadelphia Revolutionary Roundtable and Fraunces Tavern in April. In addition, Berkin will co-direct, with Catherine Clinton, the Gilder-Lehrman Summer Institute on Freedom held in New York City in July. The institute is a weeklong program for teachers, meeting at the New-York Historical Society. Jean Boddewyn (Marketing and International Business) presented a paper on "Early U.S. Business-School Literature (1960-1975) on International Business-Government Relations: Its Twenty-First-Century Relevance" at the American Graduate School of International Management (Thunderbird) in Phoenix, Ariz., in January. The paper will appear as a chapter in a book including the proceedings of this conference. In February 2004, Statistics Professor Ann Cohen Brandwein attended the Graduate Management Admission Council's Leadership Conference to learn about advancing graduate MBA programs at Baruch College. As the new director of graduate studies in the Zicklin School of Business, Brandwein oversees the Honors MBA, Flex-Time MBA and MS, and Accelerated Part-Time MBA programs (1,800 students in all). In October 2003, she was inducted as an honorary member of the Golden Key Honour Society. During the Spring 2004 semester, T.K. Das (Management) accepted the three-year position of senior editor for Organization Studies. He also became a two-year member of the Executive Committee, The Practice of Strategy (interest group), for the Strategic Management Society. In addition, Das authored the article "Time-span and Risk of Partner Opportunism in Strategic Alliances" for the Journal of Managerial Psychology and co-authored the paper "Interpartner Legitimacy in the Alliance Development Process" to be presented at the 2004 annual meeting of the Academy of Management in New Orleans. Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins, published English Professor Bridgett Davis's first novel, Shifting Through Neutral, in May. The novel is a coming-of-age story set in Detroit in the 1970s that examines a girl's love for her imperfect parents. Davis, who teaches creative writing and journalism, is also a short-story writer, essayist, reviewer, and independent filmmaker. Harry Z. Davis (Stan Ross Department of Accountancy) presented the paper "Murphy Was a Lousy Statistician" with Solomon Appel at the National Institute of Decision Sciences, Metropolitan College of New York, in March. Gayle L. DeLong (Economics and Finance) co-wrote the forthcoming article "Exporting Financial Institutions Management via Foreign Direct Investment Mergers and Acquisitions" (with A. Berger, C. Buch, and R. DeYoung). It will appear in the Journal of International Money and Finance. T.J. Desch-Obi (History) received a prestigious National Endowment for the Humanities award to investigate the role of African martial traditions in the military success of the Haitian Revolution and Cuban War of Independence. During his last visit to Haiti to study stick fighting, he uncovered evidence of this and other martial arts being used in the liberation struggle of Haiti by the armies of former bondsmen who had very limited access to firearms during the early years of the struggle. He will be traveling to Haiti, Cuba, Spain, and France to explore the legacy of African secret societies, stick fighting, and machete fighting traditions that were utilized by Afro-Caribbean liberation fighters in the 18th and 19th centuries. Dorothy Dologite (Statistics and Computer Information Systems) has been selected to be a coordinator of the 2004 Doctoral Student Consortium at this year's annual Decision Sciences Institute conference, held in Boston. An article she co-authored, "Using Application Service Providers (ASPs): Yes or No?," appeared recently in the Journal of Strategic Change. Another article she co-authored, "An Overview of Attitude and Management Issues in IT Implementation: A Small Business Owner Perspective," will be published in 2004 in the Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. Nancy Foner, Lillie and Nathan Ackerman Professor of Equality and Justice in America, published two edited books this year that focus on immigration. American Arrivals: Anthropology Engages the New Immigration (School of American Research Press) evaluates anthropology's contribution to the field of migration studies and develops a research program for the future. Not Just Black and White: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Immigration, Race, and Ethnicity in the United States (with George Fredrickson, Russell Sage Foundation) brings together a distinguished group of social scientists and historians to consider the relationship between immigration, race, and ethnicity in the U.S. since the late 19th century. Linda Weiser Friedman (Statistics and Computer Information Systems) and the doctoral students in her Fall 2003 seminar in Information Systems Research—Shoshana W. Altschuller, Qian Peng, Tziporah K. Stern, and Sheridan Yeates—co-authored and presented the paper "An Introductory Doctoral Seminar in Information Systems Research: Or, How to Transform a Class of New Doctoral Students into Seasoned Researchers in One Semester" at the 2004 Northeast Decision Sciences Institute (NEDSI) meeting on Mar. 24-26 in Atlantic City. The collaborative paper documented the experiences of the group as it was introduced to information systems (IS) research. The students produced an overview of the broad spectrum of IS research areas and a research capsule of each area. The group is also collaborating on a second paper on their IS research framework and associated research capsules. These capsules will serve as "open doors" through which a new IS scholar can enter to begin study in any of these areas. City Limits: New York's Urban Affairs News Magazine excerpted Sociology and Anthropology Professor Kenneth Guest's book God in Chinatown: Religion and Survival in New York's Evolving Immigrant Community for its cover story "Amazing Grace" (Jan. 2004). The article highlights the central role of religion in the contemporary immigrant experience, focusing particularly on the Chinese Church of Grace in Manhattan's Chinatown, a congregation founded by and serving the recent large wave of immigrants from Fuzhou, southeast China. The church serves as a worship and community center for the Fuzhounese, many of whom work in restaurants, garment sweatshops, and the construction trades. Charlotte Strunk Hansen (Economics and Finance) coauthored the conference paper "Predicting the S&P 500—Simple Efficient Methods" with Bjorn Tuypens. The paper was presented at the Financial Management Association (FMA) annual European meeting in Zurich, Switzerland, in June 2004. Hansen also won a Eugene M. Lang Junior Faculty Research Fellowship, which begins in summer 2004. Aaron Copland's America (Watson-Guptill, 2000), authored by Gail Levin (Art, Fine and Performing Arts) and Judith Tick, was just published in Japanese translation in Tokyo by Toshindo Press. Stan Ross Department of Accountancy Professor Steven V. Melnik's article "Accountant's Anti-Money Laundering Responsibilities" was published in December's edition of the CPA Journal. His article titled "Deductibility of Expenditures Incurred When Refinancing Loans Secured by Real Estate" will appear in an upcoming edition of the CPA Journal. In addition, Melnik's article "Corporate Expatriations—A Tip of an Iceberg: Restoring the Competitiveness of the United States International Tax Laws in the World's Marketplace" will appear in the Dec. 2004 edition of the New York University School of Law Journal of Legislation and Public Policy. Melnik and Baruch College's Graduate Tax Programs, of which he is director, were cited at the annual meeting of the Tax Executive Institute last December for doing a "superb job in providing a first-class education to future tax professionals." In his role as tax expert, Melnik was quoted by Newsday and the Daily News this past winter. Vince Passaro (PR director, Communications and Marketing) had a recent essay on men, women, and lying published in GQ and included in a new anthology entitled The Bastard on the Couch: 27 Men Try Really Hard to Explain Their Feelings About Love, Loss, Fatherhood, and Freedom . . . An option for film rights to Passaro's first novel, Violence, Nudity, Adult Content, was sold this spring to a Canadian production company. Economics and Finance's Alexander S. Reisz, along with Claudia Perlich, authored "Temporal Resolution of Uncertainty and Corporate Bond Yields: An Empirical Investigation," which will appear in the Journal of Business. The article presents empirical evidence of the effect of the pattern of temporal resolution of uncertainty (TRU) on corporate bond yields. Examining new bonds issued by industrial corporations between 1987 and 1996, the study found that, once controlling for other determinants of bond pricing, the later the uncertainty facing the firm was resolved, the larger the yields on corporate debt. Professor of English Carl Rollyson has written a play celebrating the life of Rebecca West, That Woman: Rebecca West Remembers. Rollyson drew on material that he amassed during the writing of his formal biography of West, Rebecca West: Saga of the Century (West's own words make up about 80 percent of the 75-minute soliloquy). Not first a playwright, Rollyson credits collaborators Helen Macleod and Anne Bobby (who starred as West in the recent production) with helping him realize the potential of the script. That Woman, still in its experimental stages, was mounted for a 10-day run at the Manhattan Theater Resource on Macdougal Street. The play's themes include early feminism and politics. An excerpt from That Woman appeared in the New York Times on Mar. 7 and a review appeared in the Mar. 8 edition of the New York Sun. The early March staging was a benefit for the Rebecca West Society. Hannah R. Rothstein (Management) has recently been appointed to the steering committee of the International Campbell Collaboration, an organization dedicated to evidence-based social policy in the areas of psychology, education, and criminal justice. In January 2004, Deborah Saivetz was invited by the Instituto Oaxaqeño de las Culturas to conduct a theater workshop in the city of Oaxaca, Mexico. Twenty professional actors from Oaxaca and environs participated in the intensive workshop entitled "Presence, Ensemble, and Autobiography in Performance." In March-April 2004, Saivetz directed Twelve Ophelias: A Play with Broken Songs, by Caridad Svich, at the Nagelberg Theatre in the Baruch Performing Arts Center, in association with the New York theater company New Georges. Saivetz and Svich collaborated on earlier developmental readings and workshops of the play, at Powerhouse Theater/New York Stage and Film in 2002 and later at New Georges and Red Bull Theater Company in 2003. Anne Swartz (Music, Fine and Performing Arts) published the article "The Songs of Karol Szymanowski in Their Literary and Musical Context" in The Polish Review (New York: Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences, 2004). Professor of Computer Information Systems Abdullah Uz Tansel's article "On Handling Time-Varying Data in the Relational Data Model" appeared in the Feb. 2004 Journal of Information and Software Technology. In April, Tansel delivered his article "Discovery of Association Rules in Temporal Databases" at the International Conference on Information Technology 2004, held in Las Vegas. Also in April, he served on the program committee of the International Conference on Data Engineering in Boston. Tansel has been invited to speak at the International Conference on Advances in Information Systems to be held in Izmir, Turkey, in Oct. 2004. He is also at work on a chapter titled "Modeling and Querying Temporal Data" for The Database Encyclopedia, to be published by Idea Group in 2005. In addition, Tansel was a panelist for the National Science Foundation graduate fellowship panel, held in Washington, D.C., in Apr. 2003. Law Professor Jay Weiser's article "The Real Estate Covenant as Commons: Incomplete Contract Remedies over Time" will appear in the Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal. Another article, "The Road to Recognition: Foreword to Marriage Rights for Same-Sex Couples in New York," is forthcoming in the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law. Weiser presented his paper "The Enforcement of Real Estate Covenants: An Empirical Study" (co-authored with Z. Wang) to the Canadian Law and Economics Association in Sept. 2003 and to the American Real Estate Society in Apr. 2004. Rui Yao (Economics and Finance) won first place in the 2003 American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association Homer Hoyt Institute Annual Dissertation Award. Yao, whose dissertation is titled Optimal Consumption and Portfolio Choices with Risky Housing and Stochastic Labor Income, received his PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2002. An article culled from the dissertation has been accepted for publication in the Review of Financial Studies, a top journal in the field of finance. Yao's research interests are asset allocation, housing economics, and real estate finance. He has also published in Real Estate Economics and the Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics.