Gregory Kasza, Indiana University-Bloomington
(election agent)
Paul Apostolidis, Whitman College Mary L. Bellhouse, Providence College
Michael Bernhard, Pennsylvania State University
Wendy Brown, University of California, Berkeley
William Chaloupka, Colorado State University
Cornell W. Clayton, Washington State University
Rose Corrigan, John Jay College/CUNY
Barbara Cruikshank, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Jennifer L. Culbert, Johns Hopkins University
Michael C. Desch, Texas A&M University
Joshua Foa Dienstag, University of California, Los Angeles          Jennifer Einspahr, Kalamazoo College
Kathy E. Ferguson, University of Hawaii
Kennan Ferguson, University of South Florida
Steven Anthony Gerencser, Indiana University-South Bend
Judith Grant, Ohio University
Christine B. Harrington, New York University
Mary Hawkesworth, Rutgers University
Catherine A. Holland, University of Missouri, Columbia
William Hurst, University of Oxford
Patrick Thaddeus Jackson, American University
James D. Johnson, University of Rochester
Gary Klass, Illinois State University
Jill L. Locke, Gustavus Adolphus College
Timothy W. Luke, Virginia Polytechnic Institute
Bruce A. Magnusson, Whitman College

STATEMENT OF POSITION

As the author of three books, the current president of the American Civil Liberties Union in the state of Washington, and a former president of the Western Political Science Association, Timothy Kaufman-Osborn is an outstanding candidate for the APSA Council. A vote for Timothy is a vote for the representation of non-PhD granting institutions, for methodological pluralism in the discipline, for competitive elections in APSA, and for the defense of academic freedom.

Timothy is the only candidate for Council who teaches at a liberal arts college. Although the faculty of non-PhD granting institutions constitute almost half of all APSA members, they have numbered just 7-14 percent of Council members and 0-15% of vice-presidents and secretaries in recent years. Only one of the last 34 APSA presidents has hailed from a non-PhD granting institution, and not a single member of APSA's appointed nominating committee this year teaches at such an institution. Timothy will be an able spokesperson for the concerns of this forgotten half of our profession.

The Perestroikan struggle for methodological pluralism is far from over. The re-legitimation of qualitative methods has yet to reach many of our association journals or to affect hiring practices at many schools. Until the profession becomes more open to scholars of different intellectual traditions, we must continue to promote the cause of pluralism at every opportunity. Timothy Kaufman-Osborn will be a staunch advocate of methodological pluralism as a member of the APSA Council.

Every major academic association in the U.S. besides APSA holds regular competitive elections. APSA's procedure is to have an appointed committee select one candidate per post. Barring challenges by petition, the nominees take office without election. This minimizes the members' influence over APSA's leadership, and it prevents elections from serving as opportunities to debate the problems of our profession. Several recent efforts to reform the current system from within have failed. APSA has yet to adopt a single recommendation of the Elections Review Committee that filed its report in 2004. Every vote for Timothy will send a message to APSA that its members wish it to undergo a transition to democracy.

Finally, as a long-time leader of the ACLU, Timothy is extraordinarily knowledgeable regarding recent political efforts to interfere with academic freedom and the most effective ways to combat them.

Timothy Kaufman-Osborn offers us the opportunity to make our association more representative and to move it in new directions. I urge you to support his candidacy with your vote.