George J. Graham died on November 30, 2006, after a courageous battle with cancer. He was 68 years old. George is survived by his daughter, Carmen Michelle Graham Christgau of San Francisco and a sister, Joyce Graham Johnson of Sarasota.

People like Glendon Schubert never die. Glen was an individualist who lived by his work, and I'm one of his products. I was not a born scholar. I had no idea of what “the life of the mind” was all about. College was for me merely four more years of high school. Academic achievement was just competition by other means, and grades were nothing but a way of keeping score.

Eugene R. Wittkopf, professor emeritus of political science at Louisiana State University, passed away suddenly on September 18, 2006. He was 63 years old. Gene was a native of Algona, Iowa and received his B.A. from Valparaiso University in 1965, and his M.P.A and his Ph.D. from the Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs at Syracuse University in 1966 and 1971, respectively. He started his academic career at the University of Florida, where he taught for 17 years. In 1987, he moved to Louisiana State University, where he taught until his retirement in 2005. Gene Wittkopf was an extraordinary scholar and teacher and a wonderful colleague and mentor.

The 103rd Annual Meeting will take place in Chicago, August 30th–September 2nd, 2007. Over 700 panels will be organized in 47 thematic divisions focusing on the meeting's theme, “Political Science and Beyond.” In addition to division panels, program Chairs Elisabeth R. Gerber (University of Michigan) and David Lake (University of California, San Diego) will offer panels broadening the scope of the study of political science, including “Funding Interdisciplinary Research,” moderated by APSA President Robert Axelrod.

Here is a quick look at some of the short courses planned for Wednesday, August 29th at the 2007 Annual Meeting in Chicago. A complete list of courses will be printed in the July issue of PS. For further details, and for information regarding pre-registration, transportation, and housing, visit www.apsanet.org. The online preliminary program, which will be released in May, provides information on panel schedules and the latest updates on the meeting.

Saluting APSA's 50-year members.

A Look at the Centennial Center for Political Science & Public Affairs

Marketa Valkova is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at Brandeis University and is currently working on her dissertation, entitled Agenda-Setting in Foreign Policy: A Comparative Study of Human Rights in U.S., British, and French Foreign Policies (1991–2006). Her dissertation examines crossnational differences in agenda-setting dynamics of international human rights issues and her cases include the foreign policy processes of the U.S., Britain, and France in the post-Cold War era.

The disastrous invasion of Iraq has shed a stark light on the limitations of military interventions. Much of the ensuing skepticism is quite healthy. But there is a risk that “the lessons of Iraq” will be learnt to the exclusion of lessons that can be drawn from the more than two dozen other interventions of the post-Cold War era.

In recognition of their outstanding academic and personal achievements, APSA is pleased to announce the APSA Minority Fellows for the 2007–2008 academic year. Awards are based on the students' undergraduate course work, GPA, GRE scores, extracurricular activities, and recommendations from political science faculty. A selection committee designated 11 Fellows to receive financial support from the Association. Members of the selection committee for this year's Fellows included Rodolfo Rosales, University of Texas, San Antonio; Mark Q. Sawyer, University of California, Los Angeles; and Janelle Wong, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. This year's Minority Fellows are:

Political scientists have long acknowledged the substantial challenges of and obstacles to effective majority leadership in the Senate. As each individual senator, regardless of rank or party affiliation, has the right to object to unanimous consent agreements that govern much of the Senate's business, to offer non-germane amendments to pending legislation, and to engage in extended debate that can only be halted by mustering 60 votes to invoke cloture, the agenda of the Senate leadership can be easily derailed. The tendency of senators to obstruct and delay has been exacerbated over the past half century by the rise of individualism and partisanship in the Senate, which has resulted in commensurate increased challenges for Senate leaders (see, for example, Polsby 1971; Sinclair 2005; Davidson and Oleszek 2006).

APSA Congressional Fellowship Program 2006–2007 office assignments.

Washington Insider.

My last two annual reports sounded a theme of continuity from year to year in the number and variety of the papers that we received and the articles that we published and in the pace of our review process. This year, too, many of these elements have differed only slightly from those of past years. In some important respects, though, 2005–2006 has been a significant departure from the years immediately preceding it. For one thing, as detailed below, during 2005–2006 we received a record number of submissions. For another, while we were considering more papers than ever before, we were simultaneously faced with the self-imposed challenge of conducting a separate review process for the November 2006 centennial issue of the Review.

In 2006, PS: Political Science and Politics published myriad articles covering a vast range of topics. Symposia alone published in 2006 focused on inequality in American democracy, on the rejection of the EU Constitution, on how the law affects the actions of department chairs, on the methodology of field research in the Middle East, on voting gaps in the 2004 election, on political corruption, and on the politics of Canada. Upcoming symposia will focus on the U.S. military, on how to incorporate the politics of the Iberian Peninsula into your syllabus, on the future of state election reform, on Islamic extremism in Europe, and on the importance of congressional leadership selection. And remember, these are only the symposia. The journal's commitment to publishing articles on pedagogy and on the profession, as well as exemplary topical scholarship on a wide array of topics, calls for an equally broad stable of expert reviewers. PS cannot publish such diverse work without the outstanding work (and open-mindedness) of our peer reviewers. The peer-review process relies on the professionalism and generosity of those who contribute their time to read and evaluate the work of others. The editors of PS thank the following scholars, who served as manuscript reviewers between January 1, 2006, and December 31, 2006. Very special thanks go to those scholars whose names appear in bold; they reviewed for PS in both 2005 and 2006.

The following tables display the most frequently downloaded APSA journal articles from the Cambridge University Press web site for each journal's last three volumes.

This is the third in a series of articles about the activities of the French Politics Group (FPG), charting the institutionalization of our research and teaching partnerships with our colleagues in France. In last year's essay for PS (April, 2006: 389–91), we discussed 10 lessons we had learned in pursuing successful international collaboration. Following yet another productive year of ever-increasing collaborative activities on both sides of the Atlantic, it appears that this prescription for success has continued to work. As evidence, one need only look at FPG-sponsored activities at the APSA annual meeting. In Philadelphia in 2006, the group hosted five panels with an average attendance of 25 people. Attendees at our (open bar) Friday, late-night cocktail party declared it to be the toast of the APSA social scene. We have seen an increased attendance of French political scientists as well (20, compared to two in 2001). Finally, an APSA-sponsored roundtable has laid the foundation for a French “State of the Discipline” to be published in collaboration with the Association Fran[,]caise de Science Politique (AFSP). Here, we revisit the top 10 key ingredients to our growing and highly fruitful collaboration in hopes of spurring on others to invest their time and limited resources to contribute to the internationalization of the discipline and APSA.

APSA international membership and upcoming international events.

Committees of the American Political Science Association.