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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: William Felkner
OSPRI NAMES DR. ERNEST GRECO FELLOW ON ACADEMIC AND POLITICAL AFFAIRS
"Just two months shy of our two year anniversary, the Ocean State Policy Research Institute is pleased to announce the addition of our sixth member to the Board of Scholars," said William Felkner, president of OSPRI. "We are honored to name Dr. Ernest Greco as our Fellow on Academic and Political Affairs."
Dr. Greco is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Roger Williams University, where he teaches Comparative Politics, specializing in Europe and Latin America. He has also taught at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, Northeastern University, Suffolk University and Emmanuel College. As the director of the Roger Williams study abroad program in Cuernavaca, Mexico, he has taught Mexican Politics each winter since 1997 at the Centro de Lengua y Comunicacion Social in Cuernavaca. "Understanding ideological and political conflicts in other countries can help enrich public policy debates in the United States" said Dr. Greco. "Learning from the successes and failures of public policy in other cultures can enlighten us as well. However, it is particularly disturbing how the ideology of "multiculturalism" often obstructs a genuine appreciation of the values of our Western cultural and intellectual tradition, and I look forward to defending those values as a contributing scholar with the Ocean State Policy Research Institute." Professor Greco is a member of numerous professional associations including the Midwest Political Science Association, the New England Political Science Association, the Mediterranean Studies Association and the History Society. Currently, he is the Treasurer of the Rhode Island chapter of the National Associations of Scholars, and a member of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights and the American Civil Rights Institute. "Genuine intellectual diversity and ideological pluralism are conspicuously absent in the academy these days" said Greco. "And policy debates in Rhode Island and the rest of the country are often conducted within very narrow limits as well. I am appreciative of the forum OSPRI provides for dissenting views from academic and political orthodoxy" Dr. Greco is a Chicago native who has lived in Providence since 1991, where he is a member of the Friends of Elmhurst and the 5th Ward Democratic Committee. His research interests include the relationship between academic freedom, academic standards and the "culture wars" in higher education. About OSPRI:
Created in 2007, our work is focused on crafting sound public policy based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, and traditional American values. We offer timely research and analysis on important issues to be shared with elected officials, the media, business leaders, community organizations and individual citizens. In recent months, we have been responsible for such successful projects as the Transparency Train - A public financial and legislative information repository, as well as regular updates published and available on our website and companion blog. About The Transparency Train: The Transparency Train Web Portal (www.transparencytrain.org) provides access to a variety of websites designed to present public information in a Google-style searchable format. These sites include: RI Data which contains every budget, payroll, public employee contract and monthly check register for all cities, towns and school districts in Rhode Island. RI Votes which is an online database of legislation and voting records. LRB Watch provides analysis and information on the State Labor Relations Board.
RI Schools is an interactive website that allows viewers to create comparative graphs of school districts plotting various metrics such as cost per student, test scores and the number of employees (coming Spring 2009). RI Donors will contain a "connect the dots" approach to viewing political and lobbying finances (coming Fall 2009). Take Action, a "how-to" manual that shows citizens how to file Freedom Of Information Act requests for public information and what to do if they don't comply. ###
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