1. Gar Alperovitz
Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy
Department of Government and Politics
University of Maryland, College Park
Paul Richard Hills
Master’s student
Phillip Merrill College of Journalism
University of Maryland
College Park
To whom it may concern
Academic reference
I had the pleasure of meeting Paul Hills in 2009. Mr. Hills was an outstanding student in the Carnegie
political economy course I taught on community-based institutional wealth production, achieving A's
throughout. This contributed to Mr. Hills achieving a perfect 4 GPA for his courses. His commitment to
research and ongoing scholastic engagement with his professors is something he clearly takes pleasure
and pride in.
Mr. Hills’ extensive experience as a journalist in covering development issues in Africa provided useful
insight for the US experience to fellow students and his teachers and contributed to him being a major
challenging and productive force in class participation and contribution. His rigorous social science
training, and the fact that he teaches journalism and media studies at Africa’s most prestigious journalism
school, the School of Journalism & Media Studies, Rhodes University, made him a useful resource for
discussions involving development and post-colonial theory in a global context. Mr. Hills also showed a
thorough knowledge of classical political economy and economic history.
Mr. Hills has outstanding critical, analytic and communication skills with an intuitive and creative ability
to draw far-reaching and accurate conclusions from vast amounts of data, very quickly. He is excellent
PhD candidate caliber, and it is unfortunate that he cannot complete his PhD studies at UMD, because of
teaching commitments to his own university. He shows enormous promise in the scholastic research
fields of political economy, social critique and media studies, which I would personally like to see
developed.
I have no hesitation highly recommending Paul Hills for PhD candidacy, for teaching positions in his
fields, for research funding and for any professional appointment he sees fit to apply for.
Sincerely
Gar Alperovitz