By Annie Lewine

On April 4, Macalester’s Political Science department will host a one-day conference in collaboration with professors and students from Carleton College.

The conference, which will take place in the Weyerhouser Board Room, will include presentations and discussions on various topics within political science and feature papers presented by professors and students from both colleges.
“The Political Science department is now the largest major on campus, and given the sheer number of students, we wanted to provide more opportunities for students to present their own original research,” said Political Science professor Paul Dosh, who is co-chair of the conference.

The conference is an initiative of Pi Sigma Alpha, the Political Science honors society, which is chaired by Natalia Espejo ’07 and Subechya Shrestha ’08. Espejo said Pi Sigma Alpha decided to organize the Macalester-Carleton conference to broaden the perspectives of Macalester students.

The society decided to partner with Carleton for the conference’s inauguration for a variety of reasons, including the similarities between the two schools. According to Dosh, both have political science departments which are “unusually strong” for schools of their size.
“Instead of focusing on the rivalry between the two schools, it will be good to focus on the common areas of study,” Espejo said.

The conference will cover a range of issues from “ideology, mobilization, and Democracy in Latin America” to “Public Policy, Urban Governance, and Community Power in the United States.” All of the presentations and discussions will be open to Macalester students.
“I’m anticipating and hoping that a lot of Macalester students will attend,” Dosh said.