2003 Events

From Goulart to Lula: Balancing National and International Pressures in Undertaking Socioeconomic Change

Panelists:

• Albert Fishlow
  Columbia University
• James Green
  California State University, Long Beach
• Mauricio Font
  Director, Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Studies

This session will zero in on the challenges faced by Latin American governments addressing severe socioeconomic problems such as poverty and inequality, while simultaneously responding to national and international capital, as well as the requirements of financial institutions. State spending, capital controls, exchange rates, monetary policies, interest rates and other economic policies obviously must all be taken into account in policy making. Brazil under Janio Quadros in the 1960s and Lula today present clear cases of such challenges.

Albert Fishlow is Director of the Institute for Latin American Studies and Professor of Economics at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, as well as the Director of the Center for the Study of Brazil. Until June 1999, he was a Senior Fellow for International Economics at the Council of Foreign Relations. Previously, Dr. Fishlow was Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley and Dean of International and Area Studies. He was also Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for International & Area Studies at Yale University. Dr. Fishlow served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs from 1975 to 1976. In 1999, he was awarded the National Order of the Southern Cross by the government of Brazil.
Dr. Fishlow's published research has addressed issues in economic history, Brazilian and Latin American development strategy, as well as economic relations between industrialized and developing countries. His publications include Capital Flows and Financial Crises (Ithaca, NY 1998), and The United States and the Americas: a 21st century View with James Jones (New York, 1999).

James N. Green is associate professor of Latin American history at California State University, Long Beach and the President of the Brazilian Studies Association. He is the author of the prize-winning book, Beyond Carnival: Male Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century Brazil (University of Chicago Press, 1999). He is currently writing a book for Duke University Press entitled: "No Time for Tears: Opposition to the Brazilian Military Dictatorship in the United States, 1964-85". Professor Green is also a national co-coordinator of the Brazil Strategy Network.

Mauricio Font is director of the Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Studies and professor of sociology at The Graduate Center and Queens College, City University of New York. His research examines problems of development and reform in Brazil, Cuba and Latin America as well as international cooperation in the Western Hemisphere. Font’s publications on Brazil include: Transforming Brazil: A Reform Era in Perspective (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), Coffee, Contention, and Change (Basil Blackwell, 1990), and Brazilian Statism: Rise, Limits, and Decline (forthcoming, 2003). He also edited and introduced Charting a New Course: The Politics of Globalization and Social Transformation (Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), a volume with twenty-six essays by Fernando Henrique Cardoso. He has also published a variety of essays on Latin America, the North American Free Trade Agreement and US-Latin America relations, Cuba, Brazil and the comparative-historical study of development trajectories in settler societies.

When: Friday, October 17 4:30 pm
Where: Room 9206
The Graduate Center
City University of New York
365 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10016
(@34th Street)

To reserve, send e-mail to bildner@gc.cuny.edu or leave message at (212) 817-2096

Click here for the complete schedule of Latin America Challenged: Legacies of the Past and Implications for the Future.