After more than four decades with the New School, Jacob Landynski passed away on July 29, 2003. Born in Gateshead, England, on May 6, 1930, he received his bachelor's degree at Brooklyn College in 1958 and his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1963, studying under Carl Swisher. His teaching career at the New School began in 1962, and he served for a period as chairman of the political science department. His major work, Search and Seizure and the Supreme Court was published in 1966 by the Johns Hopkins Press. Other works followed. His students and friends valued his contributions to scholarship and his kind and gentle manner. The following are tributes by Michla Pomerance and Louis Fisher.

APSA is thrilled to invite its members back to the politically charged atmosphere of Washington, D.C. in 2005. After a heated election-year, Washington is ready to host the country's largest meeting on political science issues, which last came to our nation's capital in 2000. Both the Annual Meeting and Washington have grown significantly in five years, with D.C. offering several new museums, majestic monuments, and even baseball!

The academic job market for political scientists has been relatively strong in recent years, with job listings in the last several years outpacing those in the 1980s and 1990s. The number of jobs posted for academic year 2003 was the highest in over 20 years. Listings for last year, AY2004, dipped from these recent highs. But early numbers of listings in AY2005 seem to have rebounded and are greater than those for corresponding quarters in the last few years. In AY2004, 920 positions were listed with the association, compared with 1,123 the year before. The 2004 level still exceeded all openings posted annually during the 1990s. Total numbers of academic jobs listed with APSA are charted in Figure 1.

In spring 2002, APSA President-Elect Theda Skocpol appointed this Task Force on Graduate Education, representing a variety of institutions, political science subfields, scholarly backgrounds, and methodological viewpoints. She asked its members to report on ways to strengthen graduate education in political science. The Task Force quickly concluded that no single structure of graduate training could be appropriate for the wide range of institutions offering graduate instruction in political science, and that departments must decide for themselves what programs best suited their capacities and interests.

This is the third annual report that I have submitted since assuming the editorship of the APSR in September of 2001. In my initial report, I characterized 2001–2002 as a start-up year for the new editorial office, greatly complicated by the September 11 attacks and the disruption of mail service by the anthrax threat, but highlighted by major procedural and outreach initiatives and by a massive upsurge in submissions. My second report described a year of beginning to settle in to a more “normal” operating mode, of undergoing an intensive internal review and instituting new procedural refinements as a consequence, and of experiencing a further, and unexpected, increase in submissions. The main theme of my third report is one of stability—continuity with, rather than major departures from, the situation described in last year's report. I think it is accurate to say that during the past year we functioned in normal operating mode rather than making it up as we went along, as often seemed to be the case during the early going.

Perspectives on Politics opened for business on June 1, 2002, and has published two complete volumes of four issues each. My first full report as editor covered submissions and, where possible, their disposition from June 1, 2002, through July 31, 2003. This report covers the succeeding year, ending on July 31, 2004.

APSA Annual Meeting attendees widely report that they found the 2004 meeting a positive experience, felt welcome at the meeting, learned things that will inform them professionally, and enjoyed the conference overall. Most attendees also felt they had sufficient opportunities to network and that the meeting met their expectations.

The Asian Pacific American Caucus (APAC), a related group of APSA, was established in 2000 to promote research on Asian Pacific American (APA) politics and address concerns of APA students and scholars in the profession. Currently, the group has about 150 members, who are connected by e-mail listserve. APAC was a driving force for the publication of the PS symposium on APA politics in September 2001, and the creation of the APSA Committee on the Status of Asian Pacific Americans in the Profession in 2003. APAC works closely with the status committee, although the latter functions as an official APSA committee and a separate entity.

Paul Y. Hammond+

This past spring, with the approval of APSA President Susanne Rudolph and under the guidance of President-Elect Margaret Levi, a subgroup of the APSA Council formulated a set of recommendations for the Association with regard to its “public presence”—or activities that sought to raise the public profile of political science research and illustrate its utility for larger public debates. The intent behind the recommendations was to guide the development of resources for the media and broader public in specific areas that were of direct relevance to the 2004 U.S. elections. The group's recommendations resulted in the reorganization of APSA staff to create a new position: Director, International and External Relations.

Pi Sigma Alpha, the National Political Science Honor Society, is pleased to announce the winners of its 2004 Chapter Activity Grant Competition. This annual competition is the largest of Pi Sigma Alpha's programs for chapters and members. In 2004, a total of $55,000 was given in grants. The National Office congratulates the members of Pi Sigma Alpha who wrote the winning proposals, and wishes success to their chapters as they carry out the activities.

As a former assistant producer for BBC News' Middle East bureau in Jerusalem, I brought an intimate awareness of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the office of Rep. Howard Berman (CA-28), where I've been working as an APSA Congressional Journalism Fellow. I chose to work for Rep. Berman because of his outstanding reputation as a thoughtful and vigorous legislator in foreign affairs. As a senior member of the International Relations Committee and ranking member of the Middle East and Africa Subcommittee, Berman is directly involved in setting policy on the issues I've covered as a journalist for years.

On the morning of March 10, 1967, the Springfield Union reported that University of Massachusetts Assistant Professor David Mayhew had received a Congressional Fellowship from the American Political Science Association (APSA). The Union stated that the Fellowship was designed to give “outstanding young political scientists [and] journalists … practical knowledge of the legislative process.” In the story, Mayhew provided the above quotation about the New Zealand-like quality of Congress. For over half a century, APSA's Congressional Fellowship Program (CFP) has made it possible for political scientists to “be there,” thus enhancing our collective ability to “be sure what it's like.”

Each September, Director Jeff Biggs flips through his vast mental Rolodex in search of speakers for the November orientation. Based on his list, he knits a tentative schedule and sends letters of invitation requesting that individuals participate on such-and-such a date. To our continual surprise and gratification, this tactic almost always works. When speakers must decline, our presumption is usually rewarded with generosity as speakers offer their expertise for another occasion. Thus, despite the logistical difficulty of bringing together over 80 experts, a coherent, informative, and often entertaining orientation emerges in time for each new class of Fellows. The 2004–2005 orientation was no exception.

The House and Senate both approved an omnibus appropriations bill on November 20, 2004 that will fund the federal government in fiscal year 2005. Congress consolidated the nine remaining spending bills into an enormous appropriations bill. This $388 billion catch-all bill sets overall agency spending limits and incorporates an across-the-board funding cut for almost all non-security related spending.

The APSA Council has acted to name Anthony (Tony) Affigne, Providence College, to fill an interim vacancy on the Council until September 2005. The vacancy was created when Robert Axelrod, University of Michigan, moved from a position on the Council to Vice President following the last Annual Business Meeting. The Constitution calls for the Council to fill interim vacancies in its own membership. The Council opted to fill this position by considering members from B.A.- and M.A.-granting institutions, since such members have served on the Council relatively infrequently. The Council considered a number of faculty from these institutions with active records of service in the Association, identified both from records of APSA service and by suggestions from Council members.

The following tables display the 10 most frequently downloaded APSA journal articles from the Cambridge University Press web site from January 2002 to present.

2004 was a busy and rewarding year on the international front. Existing programs continued to thrive, while new initiatives were formulated and are in the process of being refined. At the end of 2004, APSA records showed 1,839 members residing overseas, approximately 12.2% of the overall membership. A detailed breakdown of this number is available later in this section.

In the July 2004 issue of PS, Ashu Varshney discussed the internationalization of the APSA and made a number of valuable suggestions. I applaud the APSA for bringing the discussion about internationalization into the association and Varshney for reporting a list of suggestions. Here, I would like to offer a perspective that supports the initiative but speaks from a different perspective in two ways:

1. I am a faculty member at a primarily undergraduate public liberal arts institution, the sort of institution that Varshney correctly claims needs the assistance of the association to take advantage of the opportunities offered by international connections. My institution is located in the Midwest, which is of some relevance for the argument.

2. I am, in Varshney's definition, an international scholar. I obtained my Ph.D. in the U.S., but was born and raised in the Netherlands.

Since 2000, the French Politics Groups of APSA and PSA have been working in close collaboration, thanks to PSA/APSA financial support and the leadership of Robert Elgie (Dublin City University), Andrew Appleton (Washington State University), and Amy Mazur (Washington State University). The major goal of this collaboration is to strengthen the study of French Politics by bringing together research communities on both sides of the Atlantic.