Departments at University of Arkansas to Co-Sponsor Conference on Obama Presidency

The departments of education reform and political science at the University of Arkansas are two co-sponsors of a conference Nov. 8 in Washington, D.C., that will examine the Obama presidency and result in a book to be co-edited by Arkansas faculty and staff members.

With the largest popular vote majority since 1988, a Democratic party-dominated Congress, and entering office at a time of economic crises and two wars, President Barack Obama was poised to become America's first regime-constructing president since Ronald Reagan, according to conference organizers. In the wake of the midterm elections, this one-day conference will host academics and practitioners evaluating how well the president is meeting this ambitious mark.

The conference will take place at the Eisenhower Institute at Gettysburg College, which are the other co-sponsors of the event. Conference presenters from the University of Arkansas are Andrew Dowdle, associate professor of political science; Robert Maranto, holder of the Twenty-First Century Chair in Leadership in the education reform department; Dirk van Raemdonck, graduate coordinator for the education reform department; and Michael McShane, a student in the education reform department's doctoral program.

A book of the same title as the conference, The Obama Presidency: Change and Continuity, edited by Dowdle, van Raemdonck and Maranto will be published by Routledge in the fall of 2011. More information is available at the Routledge website.

Other presenters include Bill Galston, Clinton domestic policy adviser and Brookings Scholar; Mike Scheuer, former CIA Bin Laden task force chief; and Martha Joynt Kumar, a professor at Towson University who directs the White House Transition Project, a nonpartisan effort by presidency scholars to provide information and advice on presidential transitions and White House operations to both the incoming Bush and Obama administrations.