Ann Keller | University of California, Berkeley (original) (raw)

Papers by Ann Keller

The MIT Press eBooks, Jul 31, 2009

Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, Feb 1, 2003

famously summarized the natural world as "the ecological play in the evolutionary theater". Unlik... more famously summarized the natural world as "the ecological play in the evolutionary theater". Unlike its Elizabethan namesake, this original "globe theater" opened without a Shakespeare; there were players and a stage, but no director or manager. Were this still the case, the work of ecologists would be just to study the play-in other words, to do ecology. However, as humanity has assumed the position of director and manager, the globe theater, earth, has become somewhat more like the Globe Theatre in London. The new director is no Shakespeare, and so the work of ecologists has expanded from understanding the play to providing notes for its direction-from doing ecology to guiding policy. What role, if any, should ecologists have in policy making? For that matter, what should be the role of policy makers in ecology? In this forum, we have asked for both theory and empirical results. A new mission statement for ecologists might run something like this: "to provide the most useful scientific information possible for making the legislative and administration decisions that affect society and nature, by meshing their interests with those of policy makers". Unfortunately, there are devils lurking in the details. In particular, two dimensions of ecologists' new role have provoked increasing debate. One of these is distance, and therefore objectivity. A time-honored model for the interaction between scientists and policy makers has been for scientists to maintain a "healthy distance" (Bush 1945). Scientific funding and salaries are often provided by institutions that do not make environmental policy, such as universities and the National Science Foundation. This frees scientists from political pressure to study particular topics or to produce results that support particular policies. The downside is that the results may not be very useful for policy, given that policy-making questions are often addressed only tangentially by any given research project, especially one not specifically directed towards them. The alternative resembles endosymbiosis, with government agencies such as the USDA Forest Service employing and housing their own scientists. This arrangement seems more likely to ensure that the resulting research addresses specific policy needs, but less likely to ensure intellectual freedom. Some political scientists argue that when scientists take on a role that affects policy outcomes, their independence ought to be limited, because democracy requires such trade-offs between freedom and political responsibility (Price 1965). Some natural scientists view the bargain as Faustian, and caution colleagues that symbiotic relationships tend to switch between mutualism and parasitism as resource availability changes (Wagner 2001). An intermediate scenario is the "ecology/policy middleman", in which a third party organization accepts commissions from policy agencies to tap scientists from academia to participate on panels, review current research, and provide synthetic reports that characterize the current state of scientific knowledge on a topic of the agency's choosing. The scientists gain exposure, plus expenses and perhaps publications, which go to the credit of the universities that pay their salaries. A hallowed example of this type of scientific retail in the US is the National Academy of Sciences' National Research Council (NRC). Would an "Ecological Research Council" draw ecologists and policy makers together by just (and only just) the right amount? Consensual models seek to make the issue of distance irrelevant by creating issue-based institutions to which everyone belongs. For instance, the National Council for Science and the Environment includes stakeholders in discussions of research agendas and brings scientific information about the environment to the public and policy makers (Anonymous 2000, 2002). The real test of such models may come when such consensual bodies are given the power not just to advise on policy, but also to decide it. The second controversial dimension of the role ecologists play in policy is activism (Kaiser 2000). The debate has commonly been framed as analysis ("here is what the data say may happen if society does this") versus advocacy ("here is what society should do"). One side argues that by staying neutral, scientists preserve their credibility, which is really the only special advantage they have over non-scientists in influencing policy. The counterargument holds that, by stepping out as advocates, scientists will gain much more in the exposure of their work than they will lose in credibility (although they may first want to wait until they are already famous, or else seek safety in numbers). Adherents of the "one head, two hats" strategy claim that one can finesse the dilemma by providing analysis as a professional scientist and advocating policy as a private citizen (Kaiser 2000; Wagner 2001). Steel et al. (2001) point out that the potential range of activism by ecologists does not begin with analysis nor end with advocacy. Scientists might be seen as even more credible if they simply provided the results without discussion, instead of interpreting what their data say. Similarly, they may be seen as even more effective at putting science into policy if they could just go ahead and make the regulations themselves. However, their survey of scientists, resource managers, environmentalists, and the public suggested that none of these groups wanted scientists to be so 45

... Certainly there were instances of personnel being quickly reassigned to support response effo... more ... Certainly there were instances of personnel being quickly reassigned to support response efforts.D'Cunha (2004) reports that two rapid response teams were created from a pool of international medical graduates working to qualify as physicians in Canada. ...

Review of Policy Research, Jan 16, 2023

This study compares the regulation of two emerging technologies, the CRISPR genome‐editing system... more This study compares the regulation of two emerging technologies, the CRISPR genome‐editing system and Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAV) in the United States. The study draws on 33 in‐depth interviews with innovation and governance experts to study the relationship between their regulatory environments and developing beliefs about these technologies. Using sociotechnical imaginaries as a framework, we explore how social actors envision technologically driven futures and the social order that enables them. These imaginaries are essential to emerging technologies, where experts build a framework of potentialities for innovation still underway. While scholarship has documented how sociotechnical imaginaries arise among policymakers, groups of scientists, state and local stakeholders, and public actors in different countries, less has been said about how regulatory organizations and their actors shape expectations around technologies that are in the early and middle stages of development. This article finds that regulatory institutions shape emerging imaginaries along three related axes: the distribution of authority, technological novelty, and risk. Interviewees negotiate these three contingencies differently based on relevant extant regulatory structures and ideologies, resulting in distinct imaginaries around each technology. CRISPR actors envision genome editing as largely diminishing biomedical harm and eventually suitable for health markets, while CAV actors diverge on whether self‐driving cars alleviate or exacerbate risk and how they may enter roads. That organizational structures and practices of regulation inform broadly held sociotechnical imaginaries bears significance for studies of innovation trajectories, suggesting regulators can take an active role in shaping how risks and benefits of emerging technology are defined.

Routledge eBooks, Feb 12, 2019

Social Science & Medicine, May 1, 2017

 The CCT had its greatest impact by modifying sex workers' choices of work logistics.  Current ... more  The CCT had its greatest impact by modifying sex workers' choices of work logistics.  Current sex worker interventions target control over condoms to promote health.

PLOS ONE, Aug 27, 2012

Background: Behavior change communication (BCC) interventions, while still a necessary component ... more Background: Behavior change communication (BCC) interventions, while still a necessary component of HIV prevention, have not on their own been shown to be sufficient to stem the tide of the epidemic. The shortcomings of BCC interventions are partly due to barriers arising from structural or economic constraints. Arguments are being made for combination prevention packages that include behavior change, biomedical, and structural interventions to address the complex set of risk factors that may lead to HIV infection. Methods: In 2009/2010 we conducted 216 in-depth interviews with a subset of study participants enrolled in the RESPECT study-an HIV prevention trial in Tanzania that used cash awards to incentivize safer sexual behaviors. We analyzed community diaries to understand how the study was perceived in the community. We drew on these data to enhance our understanding of how the intervention influenced strategies for risk reduction. Results: We found that certain situations provide increased leverage for sexual negotiation, and these situations facilitated opportunistic implementation of risk reduction strategies. Opportunities enabled by the RESPECT intervention included leveraging conditional cash awards, but participants also emphasized the importance of exploiting new health status knowledge from regular STI testing. Risk reduction strategies included condom use within partnerships and/or with other partners, and an unexpected emphasis on temporary abstinence. Conclusions: Our results highlight the importance of increasing opportunities for implementing risk reduction strategies. We found that an incentive-based intervention could be effective in part by creating such opportunities, particularly among groups such as women with limited sexual agency. The results provide new evidence that expanding regular testing of STIs is another important mechanism for providing opportunities for negotiating behavior change, beyond the direct benefits of testing. Exploiting the latent demand for STI testing should receive renewed attention as part of innovative new combination interventions for HIV prevention.

Preventing Chronic Disease, Jun 8, 2023

What is already known on this topic? Schools and programs of public health (SPPH) have a moral, e... more What is already known on this topic? Schools and programs of public health (SPPH) have a moral, ethical, and disciplinary imperative to address problems that undermine our collective mission to improve health and well-being for all. Many SPPH have declared racism a public health crisis, but little guidance exists in the published literature for addressing racism, including structural racism, in academic public health. What is added by this report? We describe ARC4JSTC, an inclusive data-informed initiative at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health, for actively working toward becoming an antiracist institution. What are the implications for public health practice? We conclude with a discussion of lessons learned and next steps to inform antiracist institutional change efforts in SPPH.

The Nonproliferation Review, 1998

Archives of Public Health

Background For community health workers (CHWs) and promotores de salud (CHWs who primarily serve ... more Background For community health workers (CHWs) and promotores de salud (CHWs who primarily serve Latinx communities and are grounded in a social, rather than a clinical model of care), the process of certification highlights the tension between developing a certified workforce with formal requirements (i.e., certified CHWs) and valuing CHWs, without formal requirements, based on their roles, knowledge, and being part of the communities where they live and work (i.e., non-certified CHWs). California serves as an ideal case study to examine how these two paths can coexist. California’s CHW workforce represents distinct ideologies of care (e.g., clinical CHWs, community-based CHWs, and promotores de salud) and California stakeholders have debated certification for nearly twenty years but have not implemented such processes. Methods We employed purposive sampling to interview 108 stakeholders (i.e., 66 CHWs, 11 program managers, and 31 system-level participants) to understand their pers...

Review of Policy Research

Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy, 2012

Pandemic response takes place in distributed, uncertain, and high-tempo environments. These condi... more Pandemic response takes place in distributed, uncertain, and high-tempo environments. These conditions require public health agencies to rapidly generate and roll out publicly accountable responses in the face of incomplete and ambiguous evidence. To perform under these conditions, public health organizations have devised several tools to support decision making and response. This article examines two such tools that debuted during the 2009 H1N1 outbreak-the 2005 International Health Regulations and influenza pandemic planning. Relying on an international network of researchers who gained access to lead public health agencies in advance of the 2009 pandemic, this study draws on several forms of data-primary documentation, interviews, and an extended workshop with key officials-that were collected as the pandemic unfolded. With this unique dataset, we analyze the performance of the International Health Regulations and pandemic influenza plans from a "sensemaking" perspective. We find that insufficient attention to both the complexities and time horizons involved with adequate sensemaking limited the ability of both tools to fully meet their goals. To improve organizational performance during global pandemics, the sensemaking perspective calls attention to the importance of informal venues of informationsharing and to the need for decisionmakers to continually update planning assumptions.

Political Institutions: Bureaucracies & Public Administration eJournal, 2009

This paper develops a framework for analyzing the political-administrative capacity of public aut... more This paper develops a framework for analyzing the political-administrative capacity of public authorities to respond to transboundary crises (such as pandemics, cyberattacks and prolonged critical infrastructure failure). To complement our traditional notion of capacity as a fixed set of skills, resources, and infrastructures (e.g., “assets”), it is important to think more about institutional and processual response features that allow rapid sharing, staging, and recombination of resources during an emerging crisis. The crisis governance literature is filled with examples of both successes and failures in the mobilization and sharing of assets during crisis events. However, there has been little attention to the general factors that allow responders to effectively mobilize and deploy the collective assets of a society under threat. We analyze the 2001 anthrax outbreak in the US, the 2002-3 SARS outbreak in China and Canada, and the response to Hurricane Gustav (2008) to explore wher...

Perspectives on Public Management and Governance

Perspectives on Public Management and Governance

Important challenges to the administrative, policy-making, and implementation capacities of publi... more Important challenges to the administrative, policy-making, and implementation capacities of public organizations have arisen in recent years. These challenges may arise from many quarters, including budget cuts, organizational reforms, and most ominously, political subterfuge. Although limits on capacity may be familiar to the public organizations that must cope with them, they are less well understood by outside observers. This analytical gap undermines our ability to appraise the policy and constitutional implications of capacity loss. To begin the process of deepening our knowledge of public sector organizational capacities, this essay calls for greater investment in understanding the organizational dynamics associated with capacity loss.

Dr. Alexandra von Meier, who received her Ph.D. in Energy and Resources from U.C. Berkeley in 199... more Dr. Alexandra von Meier, who received her Ph.D. in Energy and Resources from U.C. Berkeley in 1995, is an Associate Specialist at the Center for Nuclear and Toxic Waste Management. Jennifer Miller is a doctoral student in the Department of Rhetoric, and Ann Keller is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science, all at the University of California, Berkeley. Efforts at long-term management of nuclear materials have been plagued over time by intense public controversy—regarding technical approaches, siting, and schedules. These debates have left policymakers, activists, scientists, and the interested public at considerable odds over an ultimate solution. The U.S. government’s recent decision to undertake a “dual track” approach to the disposition of excess plutonium (from dismantled nuclear weapons) is no exception. In its Record of Decision of January 1997, the Department of Energy (DOE) announced its commitment to pursue simultaneously the immobilization of plutonium...

The Nonproliferation Review, 1998

The MIT Press eBooks, Jul 31, 2009

Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, Feb 1, 2003

famously summarized the natural world as "the ecological play in the evolutionary theater". Unlik... more famously summarized the natural world as "the ecological play in the evolutionary theater". Unlike its Elizabethan namesake, this original "globe theater" opened without a Shakespeare; there were players and a stage, but no director or manager. Were this still the case, the work of ecologists would be just to study the play-in other words, to do ecology. However, as humanity has assumed the position of director and manager, the globe theater, earth, has become somewhat more like the Globe Theatre in London. The new director is no Shakespeare, and so the work of ecologists has expanded from understanding the play to providing notes for its direction-from doing ecology to guiding policy. What role, if any, should ecologists have in policy making? For that matter, what should be the role of policy makers in ecology? In this forum, we have asked for both theory and empirical results. A new mission statement for ecologists might run something like this: "to provide the most useful scientific information possible for making the legislative and administration decisions that affect society and nature, by meshing their interests with those of policy makers". Unfortunately, there are devils lurking in the details. In particular, two dimensions of ecologists' new role have provoked increasing debate. One of these is distance, and therefore objectivity. A time-honored model for the interaction between scientists and policy makers has been for scientists to maintain a "healthy distance" (Bush 1945). Scientific funding and salaries are often provided by institutions that do not make environmental policy, such as universities and the National Science Foundation. This frees scientists from political pressure to study particular topics or to produce results that support particular policies. The downside is that the results may not be very useful for policy, given that policy-making questions are often addressed only tangentially by any given research project, especially one not specifically directed towards them. The alternative resembles endosymbiosis, with government agencies such as the USDA Forest Service employing and housing their own scientists. This arrangement seems more likely to ensure that the resulting research addresses specific policy needs, but less likely to ensure intellectual freedom. Some political scientists argue that when scientists take on a role that affects policy outcomes, their independence ought to be limited, because democracy requires such trade-offs between freedom and political responsibility (Price 1965). Some natural scientists view the bargain as Faustian, and caution colleagues that symbiotic relationships tend to switch between mutualism and parasitism as resource availability changes (Wagner 2001). An intermediate scenario is the "ecology/policy middleman", in which a third party organization accepts commissions from policy agencies to tap scientists from academia to participate on panels, review current research, and provide synthetic reports that characterize the current state of scientific knowledge on a topic of the agency's choosing. The scientists gain exposure, plus expenses and perhaps publications, which go to the credit of the universities that pay their salaries. A hallowed example of this type of scientific retail in the US is the National Academy of Sciences' National Research Council (NRC). Would an "Ecological Research Council" draw ecologists and policy makers together by just (and only just) the right amount? Consensual models seek to make the issue of distance irrelevant by creating issue-based institutions to which everyone belongs. For instance, the National Council for Science and the Environment includes stakeholders in discussions of research agendas and brings scientific information about the environment to the public and policy makers (Anonymous 2000, 2002). The real test of such models may come when such consensual bodies are given the power not just to advise on policy, but also to decide it. The second controversial dimension of the role ecologists play in policy is activism (Kaiser 2000). The debate has commonly been framed as analysis ("here is what the data say may happen if society does this") versus advocacy ("here is what society should do"). One side argues that by staying neutral, scientists preserve their credibility, which is really the only special advantage they have over non-scientists in influencing policy. The counterargument holds that, by stepping out as advocates, scientists will gain much more in the exposure of their work than they will lose in credibility (although they may first want to wait until they are already famous, or else seek safety in numbers). Adherents of the "one head, two hats" strategy claim that one can finesse the dilemma by providing analysis as a professional scientist and advocating policy as a private citizen (Kaiser 2000; Wagner 2001). Steel et al. (2001) point out that the potential range of activism by ecologists does not begin with analysis nor end with advocacy. Scientists might be seen as even more credible if they simply provided the results without discussion, instead of interpreting what their data say. Similarly, they may be seen as even more effective at putting science into policy if they could just go ahead and make the regulations themselves. However, their survey of scientists, resource managers, environmentalists, and the public suggested that none of these groups wanted scientists to be so 45

... Certainly there were instances of personnel being quickly reassigned to support response effo... more ... Certainly there were instances of personnel being quickly reassigned to support response efforts.D'Cunha (2004) reports that two rapid response teams were created from a pool of international medical graduates working to qualify as physicians in Canada. ...

Review of Policy Research, Jan 16, 2023

This study compares the regulation of two emerging technologies, the CRISPR genome‐editing system... more This study compares the regulation of two emerging technologies, the CRISPR genome‐editing system and Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAV) in the United States. The study draws on 33 in‐depth interviews with innovation and governance experts to study the relationship between their regulatory environments and developing beliefs about these technologies. Using sociotechnical imaginaries as a framework, we explore how social actors envision technologically driven futures and the social order that enables them. These imaginaries are essential to emerging technologies, where experts build a framework of potentialities for innovation still underway. While scholarship has documented how sociotechnical imaginaries arise among policymakers, groups of scientists, state and local stakeholders, and public actors in different countries, less has been said about how regulatory organizations and their actors shape expectations around technologies that are in the early and middle stages of development. This article finds that regulatory institutions shape emerging imaginaries along three related axes: the distribution of authority, technological novelty, and risk. Interviewees negotiate these three contingencies differently based on relevant extant regulatory structures and ideologies, resulting in distinct imaginaries around each technology. CRISPR actors envision genome editing as largely diminishing biomedical harm and eventually suitable for health markets, while CAV actors diverge on whether self‐driving cars alleviate or exacerbate risk and how they may enter roads. That organizational structures and practices of regulation inform broadly held sociotechnical imaginaries bears significance for studies of innovation trajectories, suggesting regulators can take an active role in shaping how risks and benefits of emerging technology are defined.

Routledge eBooks, Feb 12, 2019

Social Science & Medicine, May 1, 2017

 The CCT had its greatest impact by modifying sex workers' choices of work logistics.  Current ... more  The CCT had its greatest impact by modifying sex workers' choices of work logistics.  Current sex worker interventions target control over condoms to promote health.

PLOS ONE, Aug 27, 2012

Background: Behavior change communication (BCC) interventions, while still a necessary component ... more Background: Behavior change communication (BCC) interventions, while still a necessary component of HIV prevention, have not on their own been shown to be sufficient to stem the tide of the epidemic. The shortcomings of BCC interventions are partly due to barriers arising from structural or economic constraints. Arguments are being made for combination prevention packages that include behavior change, biomedical, and structural interventions to address the complex set of risk factors that may lead to HIV infection. Methods: In 2009/2010 we conducted 216 in-depth interviews with a subset of study participants enrolled in the RESPECT study-an HIV prevention trial in Tanzania that used cash awards to incentivize safer sexual behaviors. We analyzed community diaries to understand how the study was perceived in the community. We drew on these data to enhance our understanding of how the intervention influenced strategies for risk reduction. Results: We found that certain situations provide increased leverage for sexual negotiation, and these situations facilitated opportunistic implementation of risk reduction strategies. Opportunities enabled by the RESPECT intervention included leveraging conditional cash awards, but participants also emphasized the importance of exploiting new health status knowledge from regular STI testing. Risk reduction strategies included condom use within partnerships and/or with other partners, and an unexpected emphasis on temporary abstinence. Conclusions: Our results highlight the importance of increasing opportunities for implementing risk reduction strategies. We found that an incentive-based intervention could be effective in part by creating such opportunities, particularly among groups such as women with limited sexual agency. The results provide new evidence that expanding regular testing of STIs is another important mechanism for providing opportunities for negotiating behavior change, beyond the direct benefits of testing. Exploiting the latent demand for STI testing should receive renewed attention as part of innovative new combination interventions for HIV prevention.

Preventing Chronic Disease, Jun 8, 2023

What is already known on this topic? Schools and programs of public health (SPPH) have a moral, e... more What is already known on this topic? Schools and programs of public health (SPPH) have a moral, ethical, and disciplinary imperative to address problems that undermine our collective mission to improve health and well-being for all. Many SPPH have declared racism a public health crisis, but little guidance exists in the published literature for addressing racism, including structural racism, in academic public health. What is added by this report? We describe ARC4JSTC, an inclusive data-informed initiative at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health, for actively working toward becoming an antiracist institution. What are the implications for public health practice? We conclude with a discussion of lessons learned and next steps to inform antiracist institutional change efforts in SPPH.

The Nonproliferation Review, 1998

Archives of Public Health

Background For community health workers (CHWs) and promotores de salud (CHWs who primarily serve ... more Background For community health workers (CHWs) and promotores de salud (CHWs who primarily serve Latinx communities and are grounded in a social, rather than a clinical model of care), the process of certification highlights the tension between developing a certified workforce with formal requirements (i.e., certified CHWs) and valuing CHWs, without formal requirements, based on their roles, knowledge, and being part of the communities where they live and work (i.e., non-certified CHWs). California serves as an ideal case study to examine how these two paths can coexist. California’s CHW workforce represents distinct ideologies of care (e.g., clinical CHWs, community-based CHWs, and promotores de salud) and California stakeholders have debated certification for nearly twenty years but have not implemented such processes. Methods We employed purposive sampling to interview 108 stakeholders (i.e., 66 CHWs, 11 program managers, and 31 system-level participants) to understand their pers...

Review of Policy Research

Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy, 2012

Pandemic response takes place in distributed, uncertain, and high-tempo environments. These condi... more Pandemic response takes place in distributed, uncertain, and high-tempo environments. These conditions require public health agencies to rapidly generate and roll out publicly accountable responses in the face of incomplete and ambiguous evidence. To perform under these conditions, public health organizations have devised several tools to support decision making and response. This article examines two such tools that debuted during the 2009 H1N1 outbreak-the 2005 International Health Regulations and influenza pandemic planning. Relying on an international network of researchers who gained access to lead public health agencies in advance of the 2009 pandemic, this study draws on several forms of data-primary documentation, interviews, and an extended workshop with key officials-that were collected as the pandemic unfolded. With this unique dataset, we analyze the performance of the International Health Regulations and pandemic influenza plans from a "sensemaking" perspective. We find that insufficient attention to both the complexities and time horizons involved with adequate sensemaking limited the ability of both tools to fully meet their goals. To improve organizational performance during global pandemics, the sensemaking perspective calls attention to the importance of informal venues of informationsharing and to the need for decisionmakers to continually update planning assumptions.

Political Institutions: Bureaucracies & Public Administration eJournal, 2009

This paper develops a framework for analyzing the political-administrative capacity of public aut... more This paper develops a framework for analyzing the political-administrative capacity of public authorities to respond to transboundary crises (such as pandemics, cyberattacks and prolonged critical infrastructure failure). To complement our traditional notion of capacity as a fixed set of skills, resources, and infrastructures (e.g., “assets”), it is important to think more about institutional and processual response features that allow rapid sharing, staging, and recombination of resources during an emerging crisis. The crisis governance literature is filled with examples of both successes and failures in the mobilization and sharing of assets during crisis events. However, there has been little attention to the general factors that allow responders to effectively mobilize and deploy the collective assets of a society under threat. We analyze the 2001 anthrax outbreak in the US, the 2002-3 SARS outbreak in China and Canada, and the response to Hurricane Gustav (2008) to explore wher...

Perspectives on Public Management and Governance

Perspectives on Public Management and Governance

Important challenges to the administrative, policy-making, and implementation capacities of publi... more Important challenges to the administrative, policy-making, and implementation capacities of public organizations have arisen in recent years. These challenges may arise from many quarters, including budget cuts, organizational reforms, and most ominously, political subterfuge. Although limits on capacity may be familiar to the public organizations that must cope with them, they are less well understood by outside observers. This analytical gap undermines our ability to appraise the policy and constitutional implications of capacity loss. To begin the process of deepening our knowledge of public sector organizational capacities, this essay calls for greater investment in understanding the organizational dynamics associated with capacity loss.

Dr. Alexandra von Meier, who received her Ph.D. in Energy and Resources from U.C. Berkeley in 199... more Dr. Alexandra von Meier, who received her Ph.D. in Energy and Resources from U.C. Berkeley in 1995, is an Associate Specialist at the Center for Nuclear and Toxic Waste Management. Jennifer Miller is a doctoral student in the Department of Rhetoric, and Ann Keller is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science, all at the University of California, Berkeley. Efforts at long-term management of nuclear materials have been plagued over time by intense public controversy—regarding technical approaches, siting, and schedules. These debates have left policymakers, activists, scientists, and the interested public at considerable odds over an ultimate solution. The U.S. government’s recent decision to undertake a “dual track” approach to the disposition of excess plutonium (from dismantled nuclear weapons) is no exception. In its Record of Decision of January 1997, the Department of Energy (DOE) announced its commitment to pursue simultaneously the immobilization of plutonium...

The Nonproliferation Review, 1998