Politics

The Chinese people resent media reports about exceptional air pollution in Beijing, China's Internet censorship, poor construction of Olympic venues, half-empty hotels, algae-thickened beaches, visa problems and world-wide protests of China's Tibet policy as examples of Western imperial attitudes, says the director of the University at Buffalo's Asian Studies Program.

Berlin is a much different city today than it was when presidents Kennedy and Reagan delivered iconic remarks there, but it remains an appropriate setting from which Barack Obama can deliver an important message about global relations, according to a University at Buffalo history professor who wrote a book about John F. Kennedy's famous speech in Berlin.

Attendees at the 2008 Olympics a half-a-world away, Aug. 8-24, will experience a cultural jolt and may have some concerns about their health. Richard Lee, M.D., University at Buffalo professor of medicine, is a specialist in geographic medicine and travels frequently to China. He returned from there recently and offers suggestions for international travelers headed for Beijing.

Anticipating what is likely to be one of the most interesting elections in modern history, University at Buffalo professor of political science James E. Campbell and Michael S. Lewis-Beck, professor of political science at the University of Iowa, have assembled the insights of prominent election forecasters in a special issue of the International Journal of Forecasting published this month.

Two University at Buffalo Law School professors have taken steps to make the school a world-renowned center for confronting what they call the epidemic of domestic-violence crimes, locally and internationally, using their teaching positions to coordinate a network of domestic violence advocacy that so far reaches from the classrooms of UB's O'Brian Hall to at least two other continents.

A food security expert at the University at Buffalo says the worldwide food crisis is a direct result of the choices made by policy makers and the lack of attention paid to the food system and its relationship to global warming and fossil fuels.

The Center for the Arts and the University at Buffalo's Asian Studies Program will present "Explosive Beats: Japanese Taiko Drumming" on April 15 at 7:30 p.m. The performance will be held in the Mainstage theater in the Center for the Arts on the UB North (Amherst) Campus.

For the second year in a row, the University at Buffalo Asian Studies Program will host a "CHINA Town Hall" program organized by the National Committee on United States-China Relations.

The University at Buffalo School of Management, the University at Albany's Center for International Development, the Levin Institute and the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) have signed an agreement to expand a microfinance training program that explores why and how microfinance operations grow to provide financial services to low-income people on a sustainable basis.

As part of a national program to help internationalize higher education in that country, one of Vietnam's most competitive universities has entered into a partnership with the University at Buffalo to begin teaching UB's undergraduate mechanical engineering curriculum to its own students next fall.