Penfield Library and Faculty Research Council welcome all members of the campus community to their spring Faculty Research Exchange from 3 to 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 8, in Penfield Library room 215.
This thought-provoking event will feature two SUNY Oswego faculty members Matthew McLeskey (Criminal Justice) and Scott Furlong (Politics).
McLeskey will discuss the ongoing threat of lead exposure in the era of climate change, while Furlong will discuss federal rulemaking as the most important public policy process.
Lead poisoning, McLeskey noted, disproportionately affects children in urban areas, especially those living in poverty, due to exposure from deteriorating housing, contaminated soi, and aging pipes. Historic discriminatory practices like redlining concentrated these hazards in poor and minority communities, creating long-lasting health disparities.
Yet lead poisoning can also be linked to climate change: a warming climate can exacerbate lead exposure by drying soils and increasing the mobility of lead dust. This talk explores this connection with an eye towards what this increasing threat means for the future of environmental justice.
Furlong noted that discussing public policymaking oftens look toward the legislative process and the role that Congress has in making law. Yet, congressional (statutory) lawmaking is dwarfed by the sheer volume and impact of the federal bureaucracy. These agencies and commissions are responsible for interpreting, implementing, and often making the policies set out by statutory laws.
This talk discusses the role that rulemaking plays in society, why constitutional branches allow it to happen, the debate around it constitutionality versus its more democratic process and how external actors influence policymaking in an unelected branch of government. It will also discuss how Furlong's scholarly interests developed around rulemaking and bureaucratic policymaking, which eventually led to co-authorship (with Neil Kerwin) of the book "Rulemaking: The Creation of Law and Policy by Government Agencies" (with a sixth edition recently published).
Contact Nicole Westerdahl (nicole.westerdahl@oswego.edu) with any questions.
-- Submitted by Penfield Library