Sept. 17, 2002
GW Center Examines Metropolitan Region
New Director to Focus on Urban Research
By Jane
Lingo
The Center for Washington Area Studies, now in its 22nd year, continues
to produce studies relevant to the times and to the Washington area.
Take the paper, “Urban Spatial Segregation: A Land Policy Perspective,”
written by sociology professors Gregory Squires, Samantha Friedman,
and graduate student Catherine E. Saidat, was first presented at a number
of scholarly meetings last year and then made available in published
form by the center. The Washington Post ran a news story on the
study and subsequently an op-ed piece written by Squires and Friedman.
It will now appear in the Fall 2002 issue of the journal, Urban Affairs
Review. Next year, the study will appear as a chapter in a book to be
published by the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy (Cambridge, MA.),
titled, “Experiencing Residential Segregation: A Contemporary Study
of Washington, DC.”
The center was established in 1980 and then was rechartered in 1986.
Principal players in the center’s early years were former Vice
President for Academic Affairs Roderick French and former Professor
of American Civilization Howard Gillette. The charter was rewritten
by Professor of Political Science Jeffrey Henig, who was director of
the center until this past June.
The center, as a regional studies institute, has as its purpose the
stimulation of scholarly inquiry of a multidisciplinary nature into
a broad range of matters relating to the national capital area.
Over the years, the center has produced a series of monographs and occasional
papers. Some of the subject areas for monographs have been the Georgetown
waterfront, Washington, and Washington writing as well as a study of
a 10-year period of the Greater Washington Board of Trade.
Early on, the center did a number of neighborhood studies. There were
monographs on Adams-Morgan by Henig and on Brookland, edited by George
W. McDaniel and John N. Pearce. A favorite was “Ancient Washington:
Indian Cultures of the Potomac Valley,” by Robert L. Humphrey and
Mary Elizabeth Chamber. Now the trend is more toward comparative policy
studies. A paper on charter schools has been well read and has been
widely cited in academic circles. It also has been circulated to DC
government officials. The monograph, “Foggy Bottom 1800–1975:
A Study of Uses of an Urban Neighborhood,” by Suzanne Berry Sherwood,
has drawn the attention of a number of current residents of Foggy Bottom/West
End.
The choice of subject areas for the occasional papers available from
the center is wide ranging. It includes urban design, neighborhood watch
programs, the impact of historic designation, Hispanic organizations
of the Washington area, housing, and human service delivery.
There are no faculty members budgeted for the center, however, there
is a director and two graduate fellows. Applications are invited from
graduate students. The two chosen are designated Benjamin Banneker Fellows
and work on research projects associated with the center. There is an
interdisciplinary executive committee of faculty members, ranging from
economics to political science to public administration. The center
is housed in the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences and reports
to the dean. There is a competitive research grant program for faculty.
The goal of the program is to encourage research on issues of interest
to the community and to policy makers in the Washington area. The center,
located in the Media and Public Affairs Building, suite 602, maintains
a Web site where the monographs and occasional papers may be found.
It is www.gwu.edu/~cwas.
Serving as acting director for the next year is Professor of Economics
Joseph J. Cordes. “Looking back,” he comments, “I think
we can all thank Jeff Henig for the leadership he has provided to the
center. Looking forward, I am going to be convening a working group
of faculty who have been involved with CWAS to consider future directions
for the center, especially in relationship to urban-focused research
in a number of different departments at GW and to The George Washington
Institute of Public Policy.”
Cordes has been a Brookings Economic Policy Fellow in the US Treasury
Department’s Office of the Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy,
and was deputy assistant director for tax analysis at the Congressional
Budget Office (1989–91). Currently he is an associate scholar at
the Urban Institute, and a nonresident senior fellow at the Progress
and Freedom Foundation. Co-editor of the “Encyclopedia of Taxation
and Tax Policy” (Urban Institute Press, 1999) and “Democracy,
Social Values and Public Policy” (Greenwood-Praeger, 1998), he
has had numerous articles on tax and public policy published in professional
journals.
Send feedback to: bygeorge@gwu.edu
