ASSISTANT PROFESSOR of Government and Foreign Affairs Celia M. Carroll is involved in two research projects dealing with environmental policy in Central Virginia. In “Rural Environmental Policy-Making: Land Application of Biosolids in Campbell County, Virginia,” which she presented at the Conference for State Politics and Policy meeting last winter, she addressed the political challenges facing a rural Virginia community seeking to prevent the siting of perceived environmental hazards in its neighborhood. She will present a paper, building on that study and incorporating rural issues into the larger environmental justice framework, at the Southern Political Science Association meeting in January 2008.

Carroll is also revising a chapter in her dissertation that explores the reasons for increasing polarization and partisan enmity on Capitol Hill. In a paper tentatively entitled “The Myth of Transparency: Congressional Deliberation Behind Closed Doors,” she rejects the conventional wisdom that secrecy in policy-making necessarily leads to corruption and self-interested bargaining. Instead, based on observational data and interviews with members of Congress, she argues that publicity has actually created incentives for more “bad behavior” by legislators and that only a restoration of privacy to the policy-making process will restore comity and public-spirited deliberation in national politics.

In September Carroll chaired the Center for the Constitution’s panel at the American Political Science Association meeting in Chicago.

Having arrived at the College in 2006 with B.A. and M.A. degrees from the College of William and Mary and a Ph.D. from Emory University, Carroll represented the College at the Aspen Institute’s Wye Faculty Seminar on “Citizenship and the American Polity” in July.

BEYOND THE Classroom FOR THE Classroom
Hampden-Sydney College Faculty Scholarship 2005-2008
A report by the Office of the Dean of the Faculty