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The authors argue for the inclusion of students' subjective sense of belonging in an integrated model of student persistence (Cabrera et al., J Higher Educ 64:123-139, 1993). The effects of sense of belonging and a simple intervention designed to increase sense of belonging are tested in the context of this model. The intervention increased sense of belonging for white students, but not for African American students. However, sense of belonging had direct effects on institutional commitment and indirect effects on intentions to persist and actual persistence behavior for both white and African American students.Keywords Sense of belonging Á Persistence Á Intentions Á Intervention Extensive efforts to identify factors that increase the persistence of students at colleges and universities have yielded sophisticated theories and complex models of student persistence. The current study investigates the importance of one factor that, although not traditionally emphasized in prevailing models of the college student experience, has recently received increased attention in research on student persistence: students' sense of belonging to their college or university. This study examines whether sense of belonging deserves a place in

Intergroup friendships have been linked to important outcomes such as reduced prejudice, increased empathy for outgroups, and lower intergroup anxiety. However, little is known about the factors facilitating such friendships. This longitudinal study therefore examined factors associated with the development of friendships between White and African American freshmen at a predominantly White university. African American (vs. White) and male (vs. female) students had more intergroup friendships at the end of freshman year. Friendships between African American and White freshmen were also associated with more direct and indirect intergroup contact during high school, less prejudice upon entering college, having an outgroup roommate (White or African American), having any roommate, and having more contact with outgroup members during the academic year.

The Origins and Demise of South African Apartheid explores the foundations of apartheid political economy in South Africa, its development and the factors that promoted its collapse. The authors use rational-choice theory to reconceptualize the political economy of apartheid, arguing that apartheid was not an immutable, “irrational” form of racism, but rather a redistributive policy designed to benefit whites. In general, the authors contend, the ability of economic interest groups like white workers and capitalists to prevail on the state to meet their interests depended on certain characteristics, like size of organization, which affected their capacity to organize effectively. Lowenberg and Kaempfer further argue that international economic sanctions were of limited importance in ending apartheid: economic and political sanctions imposed by the U.S. and other advanced industrialized countries were supposedly ineffective in part because those sanctions appeared “to reflect the exigencies of interest group policies within the sanctioning countries . . . without regard to their target” (119–20).