the sound and the fury

FETAL TISSUE TRANSPLANTATION -- Professional and ethical essays

2010-11-15T18:19:00.000-08:00

Ethical:

Fetal tissues have important characteristics that make them more useful and superior to mature cells and in addition, tissues of fetal cadavers can be used instead of raising and killing innocent animals for tissues. Acquired from the abortion clinics, fetal cadavers are used in fetal biomedical research. The biotechnological researchers like Patricia Schrock states that there are numerous properties that make fetal tissues superior to adult tissues when used in transplantation. First, fetal cells are capable of proliferating faster and more often than mature, fully differentiated cells. This capacity is particularly important for application to disease of the brain, because adult brain cells essentially lose their ability to regenerate. Second, fetal cells lack most of the cell-surface markers that trigger immune responses in transplant recipients. Thus, the chances of graft rejection are greatly reduced. Third, fetal tissues can survive at lower oxygen levels than mature cells, making them more resistant to the ischemic (decrease in blood supply) conditions found during transplantation or in vitro situations.

The innocent lives of animals are spared by using fetal tissues from aborted babies. Animal activists agree that instead of using live animals to obtain tissues for medical research it is the right ethical decision to use “already dead” fetuses. These unique characteristics of the fetal tissues have led to fetal tissue transplant (FTT) experiments for the treatment of several diseases that were once thought to be irreversible or incurable. Fetal tissue transplant is not a Justice issue of killing a human being to save another is unfair. Moreover, FTT is not a Rights issue of harming a human being is always wrong. The fetal tissue is taken from the abortion clinics where the fetus is already dead.

FARM SUBSIDIES -- Click here for information on government bailout of agribusiness

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EXTRASENSORY PERCEPTION -- Click here for a synopsis of scientific research

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Do some people have ESP? For my synopsis of what psychological science has to say, please click here (PDF document).

Evolution --- What is the evidence for evolution?

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Resources:

Lines of evidence: The science of evolution
The theory of evolution is broadly accepted by scientists — and for good reason! Learn about the diverse and numerous lines of evidence that support the theory of evolution.
15 evolutionary gems
This succinct briefing describes 15 examples drawn from recent research that demonstrate evolutionary theory’s power to explain natural phenomena, along with some of their supporting lines of evidence--from whale fossils to the latest in genetics.
This resource is available from Nature magazine.

Darwin's "extreme" imperfection?
Darwin used the words "extreme imperfection" to describe the gappy nature of the fossil record - but is this really such a problem? This article delves into the topic of transitional fossils and explores what we have learned about them since Darwin's time.
This article appears at SpringerLink.

Webcast: Fossils, genes, and embryos
In lecture three of a four part series, evolutionary biologist David Kingsley examines the original objections to Darwin's theory and shows how modern evidence supports the theory.
This lecture is available from Howard Hughes' BioInteractive website.

Evo in the news: What has the head of a crocodile and the gills of a fish?
This news brief, from May 2006, reviews what is likely to be the most important fossil find of the year: Tiktaalik helps us understand how our own ancestors crawled out of the water and began to walk on dry land.

A closer look at a classic ring species: The work of Tom Devitt
The Ensatina salamander has been extensively investigated because it is a ring species — a species that demonstrates how geography and the gradual accumulation of genetic differences factor into the process of speciation. Biologist Tom Devitt continues the more than 50 years of Ensatina research by applying new genetic techniques and asking new questions about this classic evolutionary example.

Clair Patterson: Radiometric dating
Clair Patterson used radiometric dating to provide evidence that Earth (and the life on it) is ancient.
This article is located within History of Evolutionary Thought.

Wallace and Wegener: Biogeography
Alfred Russel Wallace's studies of species ranges and Alfred Wegener's conception of continental drift provide compelling evidence that much of a species’ present distribution can be explained by its evolutionary history.
This article is located within History of Evolutionary Thought.

EUGENICS -- The Horrifying American Roots of Nazi Eugenics

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The Horrifying American Roots of Nazi Eugenics
By Edwin Black
Mr. Black is the author of IBM and the Holocaust and the just released War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race, from which the following article is drawn.

Hitler and his henchmen victimized an entire continent and exterminated millions in his quest for a co-called "Master Race."

But the concept of a white, blond-haired, blue-eyed master Nordic race didn't originate with Hitler. The idea was created in the United States, and cultivated in California, decades before Hitler came to power. California eugenicists played an important, although little known, role in the American eugenics movement's campaign for ethnic cleansing.

Eugenics was the racist pseudoscience determined to wipe away all human beings deemed "unfit," preserving only those who conformed to a Nordic stereotype. Elements of the philosophy were enshrined as national policy by forced sterilization and segregation laws, as well as marriage restrictions, enacted in twenty-seven states. In 1909, California became the third state to adopt such laws. Ultimately, eugenics practitioners coercively sterilized some 60,000 Americans, barred the marriage of thousands, forcibly segregated thousands in "colonies," and persecuted untold numbers in ways we are just learning. Before World War II, nearly half of coercive sterilizations were done in California, and even after the war, the state accounted for a third of all such surgeries.

California was considered an epicenter of the American eugenics movement. During the Twentieth Century's first decades, California's eugenicists included potent but little known race scientists, such as Army venereal disease specialist Dr. Paul Popenoe, citrus magnate and Polytechnic benefactor Paul Gosney, Sacramento banker Charles M. Goethe, as well as members of the California State Board of Charities and Corrections and the University of California Board of Regents.

Eugenics would have been so much bizarre parlor talk had it not been for extensive financing by corporate philanthropies, specifically the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Harriman railroad fortune. They were all in league with some of America's most respected scientists hailing from such prestigious universities as Stamford, Yale, Harvard, and Princeton. These academicians espoused race theory and race science, and then faked and twisted data to serve eugenics' racist aims.

Stanford president David Starr Jordan originated the notion of "race and blood" in his 1902 racial epistle "Blood of a Nation," in which the university scholar declared that human qualities and conditions such as talent and poverty were passed through the blood.

In 1904, the Carnegie Institution established a laboratory complex at Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island that stockpiled millions of index cards on ordinary Americans, as researchers carefully plotted the removal of families, bloodlines and whole peoples. From Cold Spring Harbor, eugenics advocates agitated in the legislatures of America, as well as the nation's social service agencies and associations.

The Harriman railroad fortune paid local charities, such as the New York Bureau of Industries and Immigration, to seek out Jewish, Italian and other immigrants in New York and other crowded cities and subject them to deportation, trumped up confinement or forced sterilization.

The Rockefeller Foundation helped found the German eugenics program and even funded the program that Josef Mengele worked in before he went to Auschwitz.

Much of the spiritual guidance and political agitation for the American eugenics movement came from California's quasi-autonomous eugenic societies, such as the Pasadena-based Human Betterment Foundation and the California branch of the American Eugenics Society, which coordinated much of their activity with the Eugenics Research Society in Long Island. These organizations--which functioned as part of a closely-knit network--published racist eugenic newsletters and pseudoscientific journals, such as Eugenical News and Eugenics, and propagandized for the Nazis.

Eugenics was born as a scientific curiosity in the Victorian age. In 1863, Sir Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, theorized that if talented people only married other talented people, the result would be measurably better offspring. At the turn of the last century, Galton's ideas were imported into the United States just as Gregor Mendel's principles of heredity were rediscovered. American eugenic advocates believed with religious fervor that the same Mendelian concepts determining the color and size of peas, corn and cattle also governed the social and intellectual character of man.

In an America demographically reeling from immigration upheaval and torn by post-Reconstruction chaos, race conflict was everywhere in the early twentieth century. Elitists, utopians and so-called "progressives" fused their smoldering race fears and class bias with their desire to make a better world. They reinvented Galton's eugenics into a repressive and racist ideology. The intent: populate the earth with vastly more of their own socio-economic and biological kind--and less or none of everyone else.

The superior species the eugenics movement sought was populated not merely by tall, strong, talented people. Eugenicists craved blond, blue-eyed Nordic types. This group alone, they believed, was fit to inherit the earth. In the process, the movement intended to subtract emancipated Negroes, immigrant Asian laborers, Indians, Hispanics, East Europeans, Jews, dark-haired hill folk, poor people, the infirm and really anyone classified outside the gentrified genetic lines drawn up by American raceologists.

How? By identifying so-called "defective" family trees and subjecting them to lifelong segregation and sterilization programs to kill their bloodlines. The grand plan was to literally wipe away the reproductive capability of those deemed weak and inferior--the so-called "unfit." The eugenicists hoped to neutralize the viability of 10 percent of the population at a sweep, until none were left except themselves.

Eighteen solutions were explored in a Carnegie-supported 1911 "Preliminary Report of the Committee of the Eugenic Section of the American Breeder's Association to Study and to Report on the Best Practical Means for Cutting Off the Defective Germ-Plasm in the Human Population." Point eight was euthanasia.

The most commonly suggested method of eugenicide in America was a "lethal chamber" or public locally operated gas chambers. In 1918, Popenoe, the Army venereal disease specialist during World War I, co-wrote the widely used textbook, Applied Eugenics, which argued, "From an historical point of view, the first method which presents itself is execution… Its value in keeping up the standard of the race should not be underestimated." Applied Eugenics also devoted a chapter to "Lethal Selection," which operated "through the destruction of the individual by some adverse feature of the environment, such as excessive cold, or bacteria, or by bodily deficiency."

Eugenic breeders believed American society was not ready to implement an organized lethal solution. But many mental institutions and doctors practiced improvised medical lethality and passive euthanasia on their own. One institution in Lincoln, Illinois fed its incoming patients milk from tubercular cows believing a eugenically strong individual would be immune. Thirty to forty percent annual death rates resulted at Lincoln. Some doctors practiced passive eugenicide one newborn infant at a time. Others doctors at mental institutions engaged in lethal neglect.

Nonetheless, with eugenicide marginalized, the main solution for eugenicists was the rapid expansion of forced segregation and sterilization, as well as more marriage restrictions. California led the nation, performing nearly all sterilization procedures with little or no due process. In its first twenty-five years of eugenic legislation, California sterilized 9,782 individuals, mostly women. Many were classified as "bad girls," diagnosed as "passionate," "oversexed" or "sexually wayward." At Sonoma, some women were sterilized because of what was deemed an abnormally large clitoris or labia.

In 1933 alone, at least 1,278 coercive sterilizations were performed, 700 of which were on women. The state's two leading sterilization mills in 1933 were Sonoma State Home with 388 operations and Patton State Hospital with 363 operations. Other sterilization centers included Agnews, Mendocino, Napa, Norwalk, Stockton and Pacific Colony state hospitals.

Even the United States Supreme Court endorsed aspects of eugenics. In its infamous 1927 decision, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, "It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind…. Three generations of imbeciles are enough." This decision opened the floodgates for thousands to be coercively sterilized or otherwise persecuted as subhuman. Years later, the Nazis at the Nuremberg trials quoted Holmes's words in their own defense.

Only after eugenics became entrenched in the United States was the campaign transplanted into Germany, in no small measure through the efforts of California eugenicists, who published booklets idealizing sterilization and circulated them to German official and scientists.

Hitler studied American eugenics laws. He tried to legitimize his anti-Semitism by medicalizing it, and wrapping it in the more palatable pseudoscientific facade of eugenics. Hitler was able to recruit more followers among reasonable Germans by claiming that science was on his side. While Hitler's race hatred sprung from his own mind, the intellectual outlines of the eugenics Hitler adopted in 1924 were made in America.

During the '20s, Carnegie Institution eugenic scientists cultivated deep personal and professional relationships with Germany's fascist eugenicists. In Mein Kampf, published in 1924, Hitler quoted American eugenic ideology and openly displayed a thorough knowledge of American eugenics. "There is today one state," wrote Hitler, "in which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception [of immigration] are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but the United States."

Hitler proudly told his comrades just how closely he followed the progress of the American eugenics movement. "I have studied with great interest," he told a fellow Nazi, "the laws of several American states concerning prevention of reproduction by people whose progeny would, in all probability, be of no value or be injurious to the racial stock."

Hitler even wrote a fan letter to American eugenic leader Madison Grant calling his race-based eugenics book, The Passing of the Great Race his "bible."

Hitler's struggle for a superior race would be a mad crusade for a Master Race. Now, the American term "Nordic" was freely exchanged with "Germanic" or "Aryan." Race science, racial purity and racial dominance became the driving force behind Hitler's Nazism. Nazi eugenics would ultimately dictate who would be persecuted in a Reich-dominated Europe, how people would live, and how they would die. Nazi doctors would become the unseen generals in Hitler's war against the Jews and other Europeans deemed inferior. Doctors would create the science, devise the eugenic formulas, and even hand-select the victims for sterilization, euthanasia and mass extermination.

During the Reich's early years, eugenicists across America welcomed Hitler's plans as the logical fulfillment of their own decades of research and effort. California eugenicists republished Nazi propaganda for American consumption. They also arranged for Nazi scientific exhibits, such as an August 1934 display at the L.A. County Museum, for the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association.

In 1934, as Germany's sterilizations were accelerating beyond 5,000 per month, the California eugenics leader C. M. Goethe upon returning from Germany ebulliently bragged to a key colleague, "You will be interested to know, that your work has played a powerful part in shaping the opinions of the group of intellectuals who are behind Hitler in this epoch-making program. Everywhere I sensed that their opinions have been tremendously stimulated by American thought.…I want you, my dear friend, to carry this thought with you for the rest of your life, that you have really jolted into action a great government of 60 million people."

That same year, ten years, after Virginia passed its sterilization act, Joseph DeJarnette, superintendent of Virginia's Western State Hospital, observed in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, "The Germans are beating us at our own game."

More than just providing the scientific roadmap, America funded Germany's eugenic institutions. By 1926, Rockefeller had donated some $410,000 -- almost $4 million in 21st-Century money -- to hundreds of German researchers. In May 1926, Rockefeller awarded $250,000 to the German Psychiatric Institute of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, later to become the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Psychiatry. Among the leading psychiatrists at the German Psychiatric Institute was Ernst Rüdin, who became director and eventually an architect of Hitler's systematic medical repression.

Another in the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute's eugenic complex of institutions was the Institute for Brain Research. Since 1915, it had operated out of a single room. Everything changed when Rockefeller money arrived in 1929. A grant of $317,000 allowed the Institute to construct a major building and take center stage in German race biology. The Institute received additional grants from the Rockefeller Foundation during the next several years. Leading the Institute, once again, was Hitler's medical henchman Ernst Rüdin. Rüdin's organization became a prime director and recipient of the murderous experimentation and research conducted on Jews, Gypsies and others.

Beginning in 1940, thousands of Germans taken from old age homes, mental institutions and other custodial facilities were systematically gassed. Between 50,000 and 100,000 were eventually killed.

Leon Whitney, executive secretary of the American Eugenics Society declared of Nazism, "While we were pussy-footing around…the Germans were calling a spade a spade."

A special recipient of Rockefeller funding was the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics in Berlin. For decades, American eugenicists had craved twins to advance their research into heredity. The Institute was now prepared to undertake such research on an unprecedented level. On May 13, 1932, the Rockefeller Foundation in New York dispatched a radiogram to its Paris office: JUNE MEETING EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE NINE THOUSAND DOLLARS OVER THREE YEAR PERIOD TO KWG INSTITUTE ANTHROPOLOGY FOR RESEARCH ON TWINS AND EFFECTS ON LATER GENERATIONS OF SUBSTANCES TOXIC FOR GERM PLASM.

At the time of Rockefeller's endowment, Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer, a hero in American eugenics circles, functioned as a head of the Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics. Rockefeller funding of that Institute continued both directly and through other research conduits during Verschuer's early tenure. In 1935, Verschuer left the Institute to form a rival eugenics facility in Frankfurt that was much heralded in the American eugenic press. Research on twins in the Third Reich exploded, backed up by government decrees. Verschuer wrote in Der Erbarzt, a eugenic doctor's journal he edited, that Germany's war would yield a "total solution to the Jewish problem."

Verschuer had a long-time assistant. His name was Josef Mengele. On May 30, 1943, Mengele arrived at Auschwitz. Verschuer notified the German Research Society, "My assistant, Dr. Josef Mengele (M.D., Ph.D.) joined me in this branch of research. He is presently employed as Hauptsturmführer [captain] and camp physician in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Anthropological testing of the most diverse racial groups in this concentration camp is being carried out with permission of the SS Reichsführer [Himmler]."

Mengele began searching the boxcar arrivals for twins. When he found them, he performed beastly experiments, scrupulously wrote up the reports and sent the paperwork back to Verschuer's institute for evaluation. Often, cadavers, eyes and other body parts were also dispatched to Berlin's eugenic institutes.

Rockefeller executives never knew of Mengele. With few exceptions, the foundation had ceased all eugenic studies in Nazi-occupied Europe before the war erupted in 1939. But by that time the die had been cast. The talented men Rockefeller and Carnegie financed, the institutions they helped found, and the science it helped create took on a scientific momentum of their own.

After the war, eugenics was declared a crime against humanity--an act of genocide. Germans were tried and they cited the California statutes in their defense. To no avail. They were found guilty.

However, Mengele's boss Verschuer escaped prosecution. Verschuer re-established his connections with California eugenicists who had gone underground and renamed their crusade "human genetics." Typical was an exchange July 25, 1946 when Popenoe wrote Verschuer, "It was indeed a pleasure to hear from you again. I have been very anxious about my colleagues in Germany…. I suppose sterilization has been discontinued in Germany?" Popenoe offered tidbits about various American eugenic luminaries and then sent various eugenic publications. In a separate package, Popenoe sent some cocoa, coffee and other goodies.

Verschuer wrote back, "Your very friendly letter of 7/25 gave me a great deal of pleasure and you have my heartfelt thanks for it. The letter builds another bridge between your and my scientific work; I hope that this bridge will never again collapse but rather make possible valuable mutual enrichment and stimulation."

Soon, Verschuer once again became a respected scientist in Germany and around the world. In 1949, he became a corresponding member of the newly formed American Society of Human Genetics, organized by American eugenicists and geneticists.

In the fall of 1950, the University of Münster offered Verschuer a position at its new Institute of Human Genetics, where he later became a dean. In the early and mid-1950s, Verschuer became an honorary member of numerous prestigious societies, including the Italian Society of Genetics, the Anthropological Society of Vienna, and the Japanese Society for Human Genetics.

Human genetics' genocidal roots in eugenics were ignored by a victorious generation that refused to link itself to the crimes of Nazism and by succeeding generations that never knew the truth of the years leading up to war. Now governors of five states, including California have issued public apologies to their citizens, past and present, for sterilization and other abuses spawned by the eugenics movement.

Human genetics became an enlightened endeavor in the late twentieth century. Hard-working, devoted scientists finally cracked the human code through the Human Genome Project. Now, every individual can be biologically identified and classified by trait and ancestry. Yet even now, some leading voices in the genetic world are calling for a cleansing of the unwanted among us, and even a master human species.

There is understandable wariness about more ordinary forms of abuse, for example, in denying insurance or employment based on genetic tests. On October 14, America's first genetic anti-discrimination legislation passed the Senate by unanimous vote. Yet because genetics research is global, no single nation's law can stop the threats.

ETHICS, Anti-Theory

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Anti-Theory

A Bibliographical Survey of Selected Introductory Philosophical
Literature on Anti-Theory
Biliographical essays are drawn from Lawrence M. Hinman, Ethics: A Pluralistic Approach to Moral Theory, 3rd Edition [Wadsworth, 2002] © 2002

The chapter, "Theories Against Theories: Recent Developments," has been omitted from the third edition of Ethics: A Pluralistic Approach. It is available free of charge on-line here.

Key Essays

One of the key essays to raise doubts about ethical theories as such was G. E. M. Anscombe's "Modern Moral Philosophy," originally published in 1958 and reprinted in her Ethics, Religion and Politics. In the next two years, Philippa Foot's "Moral Arguments" (1958) and "Moral Beliefs" (1959) continued this attack on traditional moral theory; these are reprinted in her Virtues and Vices (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978). More recently, Michael Stocker's "The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories," The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 73 (1976), pp. 453-66 has set the stage for the discussion of this issue, along with Bernard Williams' essays, especially his critique of utilitarianism in Utilitarianism: For and Against (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1973); his essay on "Morality and the Emotions" in Problems of the Self (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1973); and "Persons, Character, and Morality," "Moral Luck," and "Utilitarianism and Moral Self- Indulgence" in Moral Luck (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981). Stocker's most recent position on these issues is to be found in his Plural and Conflicting Values (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990); Williams' most recent work is Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985). A rather different perspective on the impossibility of moral theory appears in the eloquent opening chapter of MacIntyre's After Virtue, 2nd edition (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984) as well as his introduction to Revisions, edited by Stanley Hauerwas and Alasdair MacIntyre (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983).

Anthology
Stanley Clarke and Evan Simpson have edited a good anthology of recent work on this topic in Anti-Theory in Ethics and Moral Conservatism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989); it also contains a very good bibliographical essay.

Moral Contextuality
For an account of the ways in which different types of moral theories may be appropriate to different contexts, see Virginia Held, Rights and Goods: Justifying Social Action. (New York: The Free Press, 1984), esp. Chapter 4: "Moral Theory and Moral Experience." Michael Walzer makes a similar suggestion in his Spheres of Justice (New York: Basic Books, 1983). Dorothy Emmet sketches out an account of the perspectival character of moral theories in The Moral Prism (New York: St. Martin's, 1979). Stephen Toulmin's The Place of Reason in Ethics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986) argues against the universality of ethical principles and in favor of the case-by-case approach to moral problems that characterized the casuistical tradition.

Moral Theory and Moral Experience
For discussions of some general issues about the relation between moral theory and moral experience, which has come under intensive scrutiny in recent years, see, especially Edmund Pincoffs, "Quandary Ethics," Revisions, pp. 92-112, and his Quandaries and Virtues: Against Reductivism in Ethics (Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas Press, 1986), esp. Part I; Cora Diamond, "Anything but Argument?", Philosophical Investigations , Vol. 5 (January, 1982), 23-41; Annette Baier, "Theory and Reflective Practices," and "Doing Without Moral Theory," Postures of the Mind (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 1985), pp. 207-45; J. B. Schneewind, "Moral Knowledge and Moral Principles," Revisions, edited by Stanley Hauerwas and Alasdair MacIntyre (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), pp. 113-26; Amélie Oksenberg Rorty, Mind in Action: Essays in the Philosophy of Mind (Boston: Beacon Press, 1988) esp. Chap. 14, "Three Myths of Moral Theory." For a strong defense of moral theory in light of such criticisms, see Robert B. Louden, Morality and Moral Theory (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).

The importance of moral vision is stressed by Iris Murdoch, "The Idea of Perfection," The Sovereignty of Good (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970), esp. pp. 17 ff.; also see Murdoch's "Vision and Choice in Morality," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume XXX (1956), pp. 32-58. Among those deeply influenced by Murdoch, see especially the work of Lawrence Blum, including his "Iris Murdoch and the Domain of the Moral" Philosophical Studies, Vol. 50 (1986), pp. 343-67 and his "Moral Perception and Particularity." Working from a quite different background, Michael DePaul also makes a persuasive case for the role of perception in the moral life in his "Argument and Perception," The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 85, No. 10 (1988), pp. 552-65. This is also an important theme in the work of John Kekes; see especially Chapter Nine of his The Examined Life (University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1988), and his "Moral Imagination, Freedom, and the Humanities," American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 2 (April, 1991), pp. 101- 11. One of the major issues in the discussion of the nature of moral vision is that of moral realism; for an introductory discussion of the questions surrounding this issue, see David McNaughton's Moral Vision (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988).

The Notion of a Moral Agent
For illuminating comments on the general "thinness" of modern conceptions of the moral agent, see Alasdair MacIntyre, "How Moral Agents Became Ghosts," Synthese, Vol. 53 (1982), pp. 295-312.

Impartiality and Particularity

The issue of impartiality and particularity has received a lot of attention of late. As usual, much of it begins with the work of Bernard Williams; see especially his "Persons, Character, and Morality." Most recently, the Symposium on Impartiality and Ethical Theory in Ethics, Vol. 101, No 4 (July, 1991) includes excellent essays by Lawrence Blum on "Moral Perception and Particularity," by Adrian Piper on impartiality and compassion, by Marcia Baron on "Impartiality and Friendship," and by Marilynn Friedman on "The Practice of Partiality," which provides a helpful refinement of our notion of partiality itself; Barbara Herman provides a subtle and tightly-woven defense of Kantian impartiality. In addition to Herman, some of the most able defenders of impartiality include Stephen Darwall, whose Impartial Reason (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983) is one of the best articulations of a Kantian view of moral reasoning; Derek Parfit, who argues in Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984) that ethics should be more impersonal; and, most recently, Shelly Kagan's The Limits of Morality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989) offers a penetrating discussion of this issue. Robert Adams provides an excellent discussion of the issues surrounding Parfit's claims about impersonality in his review, "Should Ethics Be More Impersonal?" Philosophical Review, Vol. 98, No. 4 (October, 1989), pp. 439-84. Also see the work of Thomas Nagel, especially his The View from Nowhere (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988) and Equality and Partiality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).

The emphasis on impartiality has led to a neglect of some traditional virtues. Loyality is one of the most interesting of these. On this issue, see Philip Pettit's The Paradox of Loyalty," American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 2 (April, 1988), pp. 163-71, and especially George P. Fletcher, Loyalty: An Essay on the Morality of Relationships (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).

Ethics and Literature
On the relationship between ethics and literature, see especially the following two symposia: "Symposium on Morality and Literature" in Ethics, Vol. 98, No. 2 (January, 1988); "Literature and/as Moral Philosophy" in New Literary History, Vol. XV, No. 1 (Autumn, 1983); on the moral power of stories, also see Robert Coles, The Call of Stories: Teaching and the Moral Imagination (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989); also see the wonderfully rich analyses in Martha Craven Nussbaum's The Fragility of Goodness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986) and the conceptual framework elaborated by Richard Wollheim in his The Thread of Life (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984). Wayne C. Booth's The Company We Keep. An Ethics of Fiction (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988) offers an exceptionally insightful discussion of the rhetoric of moral theories. Richard Eldridge traces the unfolding of Kantian moral themes in Conrad, Wordworth, Coleridge, and Jane Austen in his On Moral Personhood. Philosophy, Literature, Criticism, and Self-Understanding (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989).

Emotions and Morality
Several philosophers have discussed the issue of the place of the emotions in the moral life. Bernard Williams's "Morality and the Emotions," Problems of the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), pp. 207-29 is an excellent starting-point. I have dealt with this issue in more depth in relation to Kant in "On the Purity of Our Moral Motives," The Monist, Vol. 66, No. 2 (April, 1983), pp. 251-67, as has Nancy Sherman more recently in "The Place of Emotions in Kantian Morality" in Identity, Character, and Morality, edited by Owen Flanagan and Amelie Oksenberg Rorty (Cambridge: MIT press, 1990), pp. 149-71. Justin Oakley's Morality and the Emotions (London: Routledge, 1992) offers a strong defense of the positive role that the emotions play in the moral life. Among recent works that stress the cognitive dimension of emotions, see especially Ronald de Sousa, The Rationality of Emotion (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1987); Patricia S. Greenspan, Emotions and Reasons: An Inquiry into Emotional Justification (New York: Routledge, 1988); Jerome Neu, Emotion, Thought and Therapy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977); Gabriele Taylor, Pride, Guilt and Shame: Emotions of Self-Assessment (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985); and Martha Craven Nussbaum's forthcoming The Therapy of Desire. In Wise Choices, Apt Feelings (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), Alan Gibbard articulates a theory of normative judgment in which emotions play a highly significant role.

Moral Saints
The literature on moral saints is growing quickly. In addition to Susan Wolf's "Moral Saints" The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 79, No. 8 (August, 1982), pp. 419-39 and Robert Adams' rejoinder, "Saints," The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 81, No. 7 (July, 1984), pp. 392-401, see Pincoffs' "A Defense of Perfectionism" and "Ideals of Virtue and Moral Obligation: Gandhi," both of which are in his Quandaries and Virtues (Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas Press, 1986) and Robert Louden's "Can We Be Too Moral?" Ethics, Vol. 98 (1988), pp. 361-78. For an excellent analysis of the issue of moral perfectibility in political theory, see Virginia Lewis Muller's The Idea of Perfectibility (Latham: University Press of America, 1985). Two recent philosophical works direct themselves to issues about the relationship between moral goodness and individuality: Owen Flanagan's Varieties of Moral Personality (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991) and John Kekes' Facing Evil (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990). Both Edith Wyschogrod's Saints and Postmodernism: Revisioning Moral Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990) and Robert Inchausti's The Ignorant Perfection of Ordinary People (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991) contain detailed discussions of specific figures. Lawrence Blum's "Moral Exemplars," Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Vol. XIII (1988), pp. 196-221 contains excellent discussions of specific figures, including Schindler, and a penetrating consideration of the question of flawed exemplars. For an excellent biography of Oscar Schindler's life, see Thomas Keneally Schindler's List. (New York, 1983).

Metaphors of Discourse
Comparatively little work has been done on metaphors of discourse. See the excellent discussion of argument as war in George Lackoff and Mark Johnson's Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981) and the discussion by Janice Moulton of "A Paradigm for Philosophy: The Adversary Method" and her "Duelism in Philosophy;" Maryann Ayim's "Violence and Domination as Metaphors in Academic Discourse;" and Susan Peterson's "Are You Teaching Philosophy, or Playing the Dozens?" (unpublished essay)in Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science, edited by Sandra Harding and Merrill B. Hintikka (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1983), pp. 149-64.

The importance of dialogue is emphasized by Hans-Georg Gadamer in his Truth and Method (New York: Seabury, 1975); the idea of conversation, and the conditions necessary for genuine conversations, is developed by Jurgen Habermas, especially in his Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990) and in his exchanges with Gadamer. Some helpful essays on this theme are gathered together in Michael Kelly's anthology Hermeneutics and Critical Theory in Ethics and Politics (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990). For a well-argued defense of dialogue that is couched in the language of contemporary Anglo- American philosophy, see Bruce Ackerman, "Why Dialogue?" The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 86, No. 1 (January, 1989), pp. 5-22

History behind the Equal Rights Amendment

2010-08-11T19:16:00.000-07:00

The History Behind the Equal Rights Amendment

by Roberta W. Francis,
Chair, ERA Task Force
National Council of Women's Organizations

THE EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT

Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.
Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

As supporters of the Equal Rights Amendment between 1972 and 1982 lobbied, marched, rallied, petitioned, picketed, went on hunger strikes, and committed acts of civil disobedience, it is probable that many of them were not aware of their place in the long historical continuum of women’s struggle for constitutional equality in the United States. From the very beginning, the inequality of men and women under the Constitution has been an issue for advocacy.

In 1776, Abigail Adams wrote to her husband John, "In the new code of laws, remember the ladies and do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands."1 John Adams replied, "I cannot but laugh. Depend upon it, we know better than to repeal our masculine systems."2

The new Constitution’s promised rights were fully enjoyed only by certain white males. Women were treated according to social tradition and English common law and were denied most legal rights. In general they could not vote, own property, keep their own wages, or even have custody of their children.

19th-Century Women’s Rights Struggles

The first visible public demand for equality came in 1848, at the first Woman’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, NY. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, who had met as abolitionists working against slavery, convened a two-day meeting of 300 women and men to call for justice for women in a society where they were systematically barred from the rights and privileges of citizens. A Declaration of Sentiments and eleven other resolutions were adopted with ease, but the proposal for woman suffrage was passed only after impassioned speeches by Stanton and former slave Frederick Douglass, who called the vote the right by which all others could be secured. However, the country was far from ready to take the issue of women’s rights seriously, and the call for justice was the object of much ridicule.

After the Civil War, Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Sojourner Truth fought in vain to have women included in new constitutional amendments giving rights to former slaves. The 14th Amendment defined citizens as "all persons born or naturalized in the United States" and guaranteed equal protection of the laws – but in referring to the electorate, it introduced the word "male" into the Constitution for the first time. The 15th Amendment declared that "the right of citizens . . . to vote shall not be denied or abridged . . . on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude" – but women of all races were still denied the ballot.

To Susan B. Anthony, the rejection of women’s claim to the vote was unacceptable. In 1872, she went to the polls in Rochester, NY, and cast a ballot in the presidential election, citing her citizenship under the 14th Amendment. She was arrested, tried, convicted, and fined $100, which she refused to pay. In 1875, the Supreme Court in Minor v. Happersett said that while women may be citizens, all citizens were not necessarily voters, and states were not required to allow women to vote.

Until the end of their long lives, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony campaigned for a constitutional amendment affirming that women had the right to vote, but they died in the first decade of the 20th century without ever casting a legal ballot.

Victory for Woman Suffrage

The new century saw a profound change in the lives of women, as they joined the workforce in increasing numbers, led the movement for progressive social reform, and finally generated enough mass power to win the vote. Carrie Chapman Catt and the National American Woman Suffrage Association were a mainstream lobbying force of millions at every level of government. Alice Paul and the National Woman’s Party were a small, radical group that not only lobbied but conducted marches, political boycotts, picketing of the White House, and civil disobedience. As a result, they were attacked, arrested, imprisoned, and force-fed. But the country’s conscience was stirred, and support for woman suffrage grew.

The 19th Amendment affirming women’s right to vote steamrolled out of Congress in 1919, getting more than half the ratifications it needed in the first year. Then it ran into stiff opposition from states’-rights advocates, the liquor lobby, business interests against higher wages for women, and a number of women themselves, who believed claims that the amendment would threaten the family and require more of them than they felt their sex was capable of.

As the amendment approached the necessary ratification by three-quarters of the states, the threat of rescission surfaced. Finally the battle narrowed down to a six-week seesaw struggle in Tennessee. The fate of the 19th Amendment was decided by a single vote, that of 24-year-old legislator Harry Burn, who switched from "no" to "yes" in response to a letter from his mother saying, "Hurrah, and vote for suffrage!" The Secretary of State in Washington, DC issued the 19th Amendment’s proclamation immediately, before breakfast on August 26, 1920, in order to head off any final obstructionism.3

Thus mainstream and militant suffragists together finally won the first, and still the only, specific written guarantee of women’s equal rights in the Constitution – the 19th Amendment, which declared, "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex." It had been 72 years from Seneca Falls to victory, and ironically, the most controversial resolution had been written into law first. But many laws and practices in the workplace and in society still perpetuated men’s status as privileged and women’s status as second-class citizens.

The Equal Rights Amendment

Freedom from legal sex discrimination, Alice Paul believed, required an Equal Rights Amendment that affirmed the equal application of the Constitution to all citizens. In 1923, in Seneca Falls for the celebration of the 75th anniversary of the 1848 Woman’s Rights Convention, she introduced the "Lucretia Mott Amendment," which read: "Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction." The amendment was introduced in every session of Congress until it passed in reworded form in 1972.

Although the National Woman’s Party and professional women such as Amelia Earhart supported the amendment, reformers who had worked for protective labor laws that treated women differently from men were afraid that the ERA would wipe out the progress they had made.

In the early 1940s, the Republican Party and then the Democratic Party added support of the Equal Rights Amendment to their platforms. Alice Paul rewrote the ERA in 1943 to what is now called the "Alice Paul Amendment," reflecting the 15th and the 19th Amendments: "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex." But the labor movement was still committed to protective workplace laws, and social conservatives considered equal rights for women a threat to the existing power structure.

In the 1960s, over a century after the fight to end slavery fostered the first wave of the women’s rights movement, the civil rights battles of the time provided an impetus for the second wave. Women organized to demand their birthright as citizens and persons, and the Equal Rights Amendment rather than the right to vote became the central symbol of the struggle.

Finally, organized labor and an increasingly large number of mainstream groups joined the call for the ERA, and politicians reacted to the power of organized women’s voices in a way they had not done since the battle for the vote.

The Equal Rights Amendment passed the U.S. Senate and then the House of Representatives, and on March 22, 1972, the proposed 27th Amendment to the Constitution was sent to the states for ratification. But as it had done for every amendment since the 18th (Prohibition), with the exception of the 19th Amendment, Congress placed a seven-year deadline on the ratification process. This time limit was placed not in the words of the ERA itself, but in the proposing clause.

Like the 19th Amendment before it, the ERA barreled out of Congress, getting 22 of the necessary 38 state ratifications in the first year. But the pace slowed as opposition began to organize – only eight ratifications in 1973, three in 1974, one in 1975, and none in 1976.

Arguments by ERA opponents such as Phyllis Schlafly, right-wing leader of the Eagle Forum/STOP ERA, played on the same fears that had generated female opposition to woman suffrage. Anti-ERA organizers claimed that the ERA would deny woman’s right to be supported by her husband, privacy rights would be overturned, women would be sent into combat, and abortion rights and homosexual marriages would be upheld. Opponents surfaced from other traditional sectors as well. States’-rights advocates said the ERA was a federal power grab, and business interests such as the insurance industry opposed a measure they believed would cost them money. Opposition to the ERA was also organized by fundamentalist religious groups.

Pro-ERA advocacy was led by the National Organization for Women (NOW) and ERAmerica, a coalition of nearly 80 other mainstream organizations. However, in 1977, Indiana became the 35th and so far the last state to ratify the ERA. That year also marked the death of Alice Paul, who, like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony before her, never saw the Constitution amended to include the equality of rights she had worked for all her life.

Hopes for victory continued to dim as other states postponed consideration or defeated ratification bills. Illinois changed its rules to require a three-fifths majority to ratify an amendment, thereby ensuring that their repeated simple majority votes in favor of the ERA did not count. Other states proposed or passed rescission bills, despite legal precedent that states do not have the power to retract a ratification.

As the 1979 deadline approached, some pro-ERA groups, like the League of Women Voters, wanted to retain the eleventh-hour pressure as a political strategy. But many ERA advocates appealed to Congress for an indefinite extension of the time limit, and in July 1978, NOW coordinated a successful march of 100,000 supporters in Washington, DC. Bowing to public pressure, Congress granted an extension until June 30, 1982.

The political tide continued to turn more conservative. In 1980 the Republican Party removed ERA support from its platform, and Ronald Reagan was elected president. Although pro-ERA activities increased with massive lobbying, petitioning, countdown rallies, walkathons, fundraisers, and even the radical suffragist tactics of hunger strikes, White House picketing, and civil disobedience, ERA did not succeed in getting three more state ratifications before the deadline. The country was still unwilling to guarantee women constitutional rights equal to those of men.

The Equal Rights Amendment was reintroduced in Congress on July 14, 1982 and has been before every session of Congress since that time. In the 110th Congress (2007-2008), it has been introduced as S.J.Res. 10 (lead sponsor: Sen. Edward Kennedy, MA) and H.J.Res. 40 (lead sponsor: Rep. Carolyn Maloney, NY). These bills impose no deadline on the ERA ratification process. Success in putting the ERA into the Constitution via this process would require passage by a two-thirds in each house of Congress and ratification by 38 states.

An alternative strategy for ERA ratification has arisen from the "Madison Amendment," concerning changes in Congressional pay, which was passed by Congress in 1789 and finally ratified in 1992 as the 27th Amendment to the Constitution. The acceptance of an amendment after a 203-year ratification period has led some ERA supporters to propose that Congress has the power to maintain the legal viability of the ERA’s existing 35 state ratifications. The legal analysis for this strategy is outlined in "The Equal Rights Amendment: Why the ERA Remains Legally Viable and Properly Before the States," an article by Allison Held, Sheryl Herndon, and Danielle Stager in the Spring 1997 issue of William & Mary Journal of Women and the Law.

Under this rationale, it is likely that Congress could choose to legislatively adjust or repeal the existing time limit constraint on the ERA, determine whether or not state ratifications after the expiration of a time limit in a proposing clause are valid, and promulgate the ERA after the 38th state ratifies.

The Congressional Research Service analyzed this legal argument in 19964 and concluded that acceptance of the Madison Amendment does have implications for the premise that approval of the ERA by three more states could allow Congress to declare ratification accomplished. As of 2007, ratification bills testing this three-state strategy have been introduced in one or more legislative sessions in eight states (Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Virginia), and supporters are seeking to move such bills in all 15 of the unratified states.5

In her remarks as she introduced the Equal Rights Amendment in Seneca Falls in 1923, Alice Paul sounded a call that has great poignancy and significance over 80 years later: "If we keep on this way they will be celebrating the 150th anniversary of the 1848 Convention without being much further advanced in equal rights than we are. . . . If we had not concentrated on the Federal Amendment we should be working today for suffrage. . . . We shall not be safe until the principle of equal rights is written into the framework of our government."

NOTES

1 Letter, March 31, 1776 (in Alice S. Rossi, The Feminist Papers: From Adams to de Beauvoir, New York: Columbia University Press, 1973).

2 Letter, April 14, 1776 (ibid.)

3 Carol Lynn Yellin, "Countdown in Tennessee, 1920," American Heritage (December 1978).

4 David C. Huckabee, "Equal Rights Amendment: Ratification Issues," Memorandum, March 18, 1996 (Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, Washington, DC).

5Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah, and Virginia.

ENVIRONMENT, Kenya

2010-08-11T19:11:00.000-07:00

House Moves to Protect Nation's Environment
Alphonce Shiundu
11 August 2010

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Nairobi — Kenya's Parliament is asking the Government to enact green policies to protect the environment.

The unanimous decision came from the House on Wednesday morning as MPs approved a motion calling on the Government to develop emission standards, curb pollution and combat climate change.

Mr Chachu Ganya (North Horr, ODM) took the climate change battle to the House with a call on the government to put a "clean and secure environment" on the forefront, even as it trudges towards the country's development roadmap, the Kenya Vision 2030.

Mr Ganya said, the development envisioned in the next 20 years was "bound to generate high pollution and accumulation of toxic waste, and greenhouse gases contributing to climate change."

Dr Wilbur Otichillo (Emuhaya, ODM) and assistant minister Lee Kinyanjui backed the motion saying it was time the Government put the push for a "green economy" at the core of the development agenda.

Buoyed by his experience in Europe, Dr Otichillo proposed that the government can also build subways and introduce trams and electric trains as an alternative to the pollution from the exhaust fumes from vehicles.

"If you go to the Netherlands, most people go to work using bicycles. This reduces pollution. But here in Kenya, there's so much carbon dioxide emitted in the atmosphere due to the huge traffic jams in our city," he said. "The issue of pollution is causing a lot of health problems. Cases of respiratory illnesses are just too many and the main culprit is the transport sector. We have to act now."

Carbon Tax

The MP said the government can also introduce carbon tax so that "those whose vehicles and factories contribute most to pollution" are forced to pay for the dangers they are exposing the country to. He said the city has to be demarcated into "traffic zones" so that it is easier to manage pollution from vehicles. To enforce this, he said, car stickers will be essential.

The management of electronic waste - from computers, mobile phones, TV sets, radios and such -- also surfaced in the debate, with MPs saying it was important to look at how this are disposed of.

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"We need to introduce a policy whereby people are forced to share cars, to pool cars," Dr Otichillo said. MPs also pushed for solar, biogas and wind energy as alternatives to the diesel and petrol engines used in factories and other manufacturing plants.

Ms Rachel Shebesh (nominated, ODM) said the government had to involve the people in the climate change debate. "So far, the debate has been technical and restricted to boardrooms and conferences. We need to enlighten our citizens," she said. "It is about time that the government clearly spells out the role of each ministry in climate change. The world is going green, there are green economies, we can't expect all data on climate change in one ministry. We need a central command to advise all ministries."

Mr Eugene Wamalwa (Saboti, PNU) said MPs ought to put the government on toes when it comes curbing the importation of old vehicles and nabbing unroadworthy vehicles.

ENGLISH-ONLY MOVEMENT

2010-08-11T19:08:00.000-07:00

The English Only movement is the organized effort to make English as the official language of the United States, led principally by a powerful right wing organization called U. S. English, whose founder is connected to anti-immigrant and population controlled organizations.

The premise of the movement is that the primacy of English language is endangered as more of more immigrants are moving into the United States who do not speak English and are coddled by bilingual services which have encouraged them not to learn English. The growing move to multilingualism, English Only advocates warned, will lead to disunity and separatism in the United States. The reality is that U.S. English and other English Only organizations are more concerned with the non-European and non-white characteristics of the recent immigrant population. Their xenophobia is shown by the anti-writings of its founders and the fact they are often associated with to anti-immigration organizations.

The goal of the English Only Movement is to make English as the official language of the federal government and the states, banning most interpreter services and limiting bilingual education. U.S. English has succeeded to lobby for the passage of English Only initiatives or legislation in 18 states since its founding in 1983 (There are presently 23 English Only states).

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Who is Behind the English Only Movement?

The English Only movement is the organized effort to make English the official language of the United States. It's led principally by a well-funded multi-million dollar right wing organization called U.S. English, which boasts a membership of over 570,000. U. S. English has successfully lobbied for the passage of English Only laws in 18 states (out of 22 total English Only states) since its founding in 1983.

Although U.S. English's propaganda often suggests otherwise, the racism and anti-immigrant philosophies are readily evident when we examine some of U. S. English's roots. Dr. John Tanton, principal founder and architect of U.S. English, is also the founder and former chairman of the anti-immigration organization, FAIR ( Federaton for American Immigration Reform). FAIR is the leading national agency promoting the current wave of legislation and policy restricting immigration and denying benefits for immigrants. FAIR and U.S. English are on a list of anti-immigration and population-control organizations supported by Dr. Tanton's personal non-profit umbrella, U.S. Inc. Other organizations on that list include: the Center for Immigration Studies, Californians for Population Stabilization, and Americans for Border Control.

Dr. Tanton's racist views on immigrants, particularly regarding Latinos, were reflected in a 1986 memo that was leaked out - warning about the specter of an Hispanic take-over of the United States: " ... in a society where the majority rules... Will the present majority peaceably hand over its political power to a group that is simply more fertile... As Whites see their power and control over their lives declining, will they simply go quietly into the night?" As the result of the negative publicity related to the memo, Dr. Tanton was forced to resign as Chairman of U. S. English. However, U.S. English's propaganda machine has successfully deflected the Tanton controversy by reinventing some of its history. The late Senator S. I. Hayakawa of California, the former honorary chairman, is now described as the lone founder of U.S. English in all its literature.

Another questionable source of U.S. English's earlier funding was the Pioneer Fund, which supports eugenics research for racial betterment. Pioneer Fund was created in 1937 to support what it called "applied genetics in present day Germany", referring to Hitler's program of forced sterilization. In the 1970's, the Pioneer Fund also financed the research of William Shackle and Arthur Jenson on Blacks and lower IQ's.

The third principal funding source for U.S. English was Mellon heiress Cordelia Scaife May, who poured at least $5.8 to U.S. English, FAIR and other affiliated organization over the 1980's through her Laurel Foundation. May's Laurel Foundation sponsored the publication of The Camp of the Saints, a futuristic novel about the destruction of European civilization by third world immigrants.

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Frequently Asked Questions About English-Only

Is the primacy of the English endangered?

Are recent immigrants resistant to learning English?

Would official English laws promote national unity?

Aren't "English Only" laws simply harmless symbolic acts?

1) Is the primacy of the English endangered?

No, the primacy of English is not endangered. It's already the de facto language of the United States. English is the de facto language of the United States. All public business, and most private business, is conducted in English. Foreign businesses who do business successfully in the United States require that their salespeople learn English. What we should support instead is the mastery of a second language or multiple languages. For American business to be competitive in our global market place, knowledge of other languages and cultures is crucial.

2) Are recent immigrants resistant to learning English?

No, newcomers recognize the primacy of English in our society and want to learn English. Over 95% of the people in the United States already speak English and over 85% are native speakers. Immigrants are experiencing a faster shift to English today than there was in prior generations. According to a 1985 Rand Corporation study, 95% of first generation Hispanic immigrants learn English; of their children, 100% speak English, and 50% speak only English. English Only legislation will not provide one penny towards the learning of English and will actually jeopardize the funding of bilingual education programs which help immigrants to learn English. There are thousands of people on waiting lists for English as Second Language classes around the country who want to learn English but cannot because classes are overfilled.

3) Would official English laws promote national unity?

No. Switzerland has three "official" languages and is a model of national unity, while Spain suffered three year bloody civil war when it had one "official" language. Social unity can only exist based on respect for people of different languages and cultures and not the repression of them. Language diversity does not cause social disunity. Similarly, monolingualism does not guarantee social unity.

4) Aren't "English Only" laws simply harmless symbolic acts?

"English Only" laws are not as innocuous as designating a state's official bird, song, or muffin. It is an attempt to limit access to governmental services for newly-arrived residents who may need language assistance in such crucial services as emergency medical help, child health immunization and public health and safety information, elderly and refugee services, employment and training information, etc.

CIVIL RIGHTS

2010-01-31T00:01:00.000-08:00

Civil Rights Timeline
Milestones in the modern civil rights movement

by Borgna Brunner and Elissa Haney

1948 1954 1960 1967 1968 1971 1988 1991 2005 2008 2009

1948 July 26
Truman signs Executive Order 9981, which states, "It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin."
1954 May 17
The Supreme Court rules on the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kans., unanimously agreeing that segregation in public schools is unconstitutional. The ruling paves the way for large-scale desegregation. The decision overturns the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling that sanctioned "separate but equal" segregation of the races, ruling that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." It is a victory for NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall, who will later return to the Supreme Court as the nation's first black justice.
Top
1955 Aug.
Fourteen-year-old Chicagoan Emmett Till is visiting family in Mississippi when he is kidnapped, brutally beaten, shot, and dumped in the Tallahatchie River for allegedly whistling at a white woman. Two white men, J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant, are arrested for the murder and acquitted by an all-white jury. They later boast about committing the murder in a Look magazine interview. The case becomes a cause célèbre of the civil rights movement.
Dec. 1
(Montgomery, Ala.) NAACP member Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat at the front of the "colored section" of a bus to a white passenger, defying a southern custom of the time. In response to her arrest the Montgomery black community launches a bus boycott, which will last for more than a year, until the buses are desegregated Dec. 21, 1956. As newly elected president of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., is instrumental in leading the boycott.
Top
1957 Jan.–Feb.
Martin Luther King, Charles K. Steele, and Fred L. Shuttlesworth establish the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, of which King is made the first president. The SCLC becomes a major force in organizing the civil rights movement and bases its principles on nonviolence and civil disobedience. According to King, it is essential that the civil rights movement not sink to the level of the racists and hatemongers who oppose them: "We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline," he urges.
Sept. (Little Rock, Ark.) Formerly all-white Central High School learns that integration is easier said than done. Nine black students are blocked from entering the school on the orders of Governor Orval Faubus. President Eisenhower sends federal troops and the National Guard to intervene on behalf of the students, who become known as the "Little Rock Nine."
1960 Feb. 1
(Greensboro, N.C.) Four black students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College begin a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter. Although they are refused service, they are allowed to stay at the counter. The event triggers many similar nonviolent protests throughout the South. Six months later the original four protesters are served lunch at the same Woolworth's counter. Student sit-ins would be effective throughout the Deep South in integrating parks, swimming pools, theaters, libraries, and other public facilities.
April
(Raleigh, N.C.) The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is founded at Shaw University, providing young blacks with a place in the civil rights movement. The SNCC later grows into a more radical organization, especially under the leadership of Stokely Carmichael (1966–1967).
Top
1961 May 4
Over the spring and summer, student volunteers begin taking bus trips through the South to test out new laws that prohibit segregation in interstate travel facilities, which includes bus and railway stations. Several of the groups of "freedom riders," as they are called, are attacked by angry mobs along the way. The program, sponsored by The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), involves more than 1,000 volunteers, black and white.
1962 Oct. 1
James Meredith becomes the first black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi. Violence and riots surrounding the incident cause President Kennedy to send 5,000 federal troops.
1963 April 16
Martin Luther King is arrested and jailed during anti-segregation protests in Birmingham, Ala.; he writes his seminal "Letter from Birmingham Jail," arguing that individuals have the moral duty to disobey unjust laws.
May
During civil rights protests in Birmingham, Ala., Commissioner of Public Safety Eugene "Bull" Connor uses fire hoses and police dogs on black demonstrators. These images of brutality, which are televised and published widely, are instrumental in gaining sympathy for the civil rights movement around the world.
June 12
(Jackson, Miss.) Mississippi's NAACP field secretary, 37-year-old Medgar Evers, is murdered outside his home. Byron De La Beckwith is tried twice in 1964, both trials resulting in hung juries. Thirty years later he is convicted for murdering Evers.
Aug. 28
(Washington, D.C.) About 200,000 people join the March on Washington. Congregating at the Lincoln Memorial, participants listen as Martin Luther King delivers his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.
Sept. 15
(Birmingham, Ala.) Four young girls (Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Addie Mae Collins) attending Sunday school are killed when a bomb explodes at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, a popular location for civil rights meetings. Riots erupt in Birmingham, leading to the deaths of two more black youths.
Top
1964 Jan. 23
The 24th Amendment abolishes the poll tax, which originally had been instituted in 11 southern states after Reconstruction to make it difficult for poor blacks to vote.
Summer
The Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), a network of civil rights groups that includes CORE and SNCC, launches a massive effort to register black voters during what becomes known as the Freedom Summer. It also sends delegates to the Democratic National Convention to protest—and attempt to unseat—the official all-white Mississippi contingent.
July 2
President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination of all kinds based on race, color, religion, or national origin. The law also provides the federal government with the powers to enforce desegregation.
Aug. 4
(Neshoba Country, Miss.) The bodies of three civil-rights workers—two white, one black—are found in an earthen dam, six weeks into a federal investigation backed by President Johnson. James E. Chaney, 21; Andrew Goodman, 21; and Michael Schwerner, 24, had been working to register black voters in Mississippi, and, on June 21, had gone to investigate the burning of a black church. They were arrested by the police on speeding charges, incarcerated for several hours, and then released after dark into the hands of the Ku Klux Klan, who murdered them.
1965 Feb. 21
(Harlem, N.Y.) Malcolm X, black nationalist and founder of the Organization of Afro-American Unity, is shot to death. It is believed the assailants are members of the Black Muslim faith, which Malcolm had recently abandoned in favor of orthodox Islam.
March 7
(Selma, Ala.) Blacks begin a march to Montgomery in support of voting rights but are stopped at the Pettus Bridge by a police blockade. Fifty marchers are hospitalized after police use tear gas, whips, and clubs against them. The incident is dubbed "Bloody Sunday" by the media. The march is considered the catalyst for pushing through the voting rights act five months later.
Aug. 10
Congress passes the Voting Rights Act of 1965, making it easier for Southern blacks to register to vote. Literacy tests, poll taxes, and other such requirements that were used to restrict black voting are made illegal.
Aug. 11–17, 1965
(Watts, Calif.) Race riots erupt in a black section of Los Angeles.
Sept. 24, 1965
Asserting that civil rights laws alone are not enough to remedy discrimination, President Johnson issues Executive Order 11246, which enforces affirmative action for the first time. It requires government contractors to "take affirmative action" toward prospective minority employees in all aspects of hiring and employment.
Top
1966
Oct.
(Oakland, Calif.) The militant Black Panthers are founded by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale.
1967 April 19
Stokely Carmichael, a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), coins the phrase "black power" in a speech in Seattle. He defines it as an assertion of black pride and "the coming together of black people to fight for their liberation by any means necessary." The term's radicalism alarms many who believe the civil rights movement's effectiveness and moral authority crucially depend on nonviolent civil disobedience.
June 12
In Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court rules that prohibiting interracial marriage is unconstitutional. Sixteen states that still banned interracial marriage at the time are forced to revise their laws.
July
Major race riots take place in Newark (July 12–16) and Detroit (July 23–30).
1968 April 4
(Memphis, Tenn.) Martin Luther King, at age 39, is shot as he stands on the balcony outside his hotel room. Escaped convict and committed racist James Earl Ray is convicted of the crime.
April 11
President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968, prohibiting discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing.
1971 April 20
The Supreme Court, in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, upholds busing as a legitimate means for achieving integration of public schools. Although largely unwelcome (and sometimes violently opposed) in local school districts, court-ordered busing plans in cities such as Charlotte, Boston, and Denver continue until the late 1990s.
Top
1988 March 22
Overriding President Reagan's veto, Congress passes the Civil Rights Restoration Act, which expands the reach of non-discrimination laws within private institutions receiving federal funds.
1991 Nov. 22
After two years of debates, vetoes, and threatened vetoes, President Bush reverses himself and signs the Civil Rights Act of 1991, strengthening existing civil rights laws and providing for damages in cases of intentional employment discrimination.
Top
1992 April 29
(Los Angeles, Calif.) The first race riots in decades erupt in south-central Los Angeles after a jury acquits four white police officers for the videotaped beating of African American Rodney King.
2003 June 23
In the most important affirmative action decision since the 1978 Bakke case, the Supreme Court (5–4) upholds the University of Michigan Law School's policy, ruling that race can be one of many factors considered by colleges when selecting their students because it furthers "a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body."

(See also: Affirmative Action Timeline.)
Top
2005 June 21
The ringleader of the Mississippi civil rights murders (see Aug. 4, 1964), Edgar Ray Killen, is convicted of manslaughter on the 41st anniversary of the crimes.
October 24
Rosa Parks dies at age 92.
2006 January 30
Coretta Scott King dies of a stroke at age 78.
2007 February
Emmett Till's 1955 murder case, reopened by the Department of Justice in 2004, is officially closed. The two confessed murderers, J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant, were dead of cancer by 1994, and prosecutors lacked sufficient evidence to pursue further convictions.
May 10
James Bonard Fowler, a former state trooper, is indicted for the murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson 40 years after Jackson's death. The 1965 killing lead to a series of historic civil rights protests in Selma, Ala.
2008 January
Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) introduces the Civil Rights Act of 2008. Some of the proposed provisions include ensuring that federal funds are not used to subsidize discrimination, holding employers accountable for age discrimination, and improving accountability for other violations of civil rights and workers' rights.
Top
2009 January
In the Supreme Court case Ricci v. DeStefano, a lawsuit brought against the city of New Haven, 18 plaintiffs�17 white people and one Hispanic�argued that results of the 2003 lieutenant and captain exams were thrown out when it was determined that few minority firefighters qualified for advancement. The city claimed they threw out the results because they feared liability under a disparate-impact statute for issuing tests that discriminated against minority firefighters. The plaintiffs claimed that they were victims of reverse discrimination under the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Supreme Court ruled (5�4) in favor of the firefighters, saying New Haven's "action in discarding the tests was a violation of Title VII."

•Black History Month Features
•"I Have a Dream" Speech
•Letter from Birmingham Jail
•Notable Speeches and Letters by African Americans
•Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
•Martin Luther King, Jr.

•Civil Rights Leaders

•Quiz: Civil Rights Heroes (for Kids) New!
•Black History Month

•African American History Timeline
•Civil Rights Cases Reopened

•Civil Rights

KU KLUX KLAN

2010-01-30T23:59:00.000-08:00

The First Ku Klux Klan
The original Ku Klux Klan was organized by ex-Confederate elements to oppose the Reconstruction policies of the radical Republican Congress and to maintain “white supremacy.” After the Civil War, when local government in the South was weak or nonexistent and there were fears of black outrages and even of an insurrection, informal vigilante organizations or armed patrols were formed in almost all communities. These were linked together in societies, such as the Men of Justice, the Pale Faces, the Constitutional Union Guards, the White Brotherhood, and the Order of the White Rose. The Ku Klux Klan was the best known of these, and in time it absorbed many of the smaller organizations.
It was organized at Pulaski, Tenn., in May, 1866. Its strange disguises, its silent parades, its midnight rides, its mysterious language and commands, were found to be most effective in playing upon fears and superstitions. The riders muffled their horses' feet and covered the horses with white robes. They themselves, dressed in flowing white sheets, their faces covered with white masks, and with skulls at their saddle horns, posed as spirits of the Confederate dead returned from the battlefields. Although the Klan was often able to achieve its aims by terror alone, whippings and lynchings were also used, not only against blacks but also against the so-called carpetbaggers and scalawags.
A general organization of the local Klans was effected in Apr., 1867, at Nashville, Tenn. Gen. N. B. Forrest, the famous Confederate cavalry leader, was made Grand Wizard of the Empire and was assisted by ten Genii. Each state constituted a Realm under a Grand Dragon with eight Hydras as a staff; several counties formed a Dominion controlled by a Grand Titan and six Furies; a county was a Province ruled by a Grand Giant and four Night Hawks; the local Den was governed by a Grand Cyclops with two Night Hawks as aides. The individual members were called Ghouls.
Control over local Dens was not as complete as this organization would seem to indicate, and reckless and even lawless local leaders sometimes committed acts that the leaders could not countenance. General Forrest, in Jan., 1869, seemingly under some apprehension as to the use of its power, ordered the disbandment of the Klan and resigned as Grand Wizard. Local organizations continued, some of them for many years.
The Klan was particularly effective in systematically keeping black men away from the polls, so that the ex-Confederates gained political control in many states. Congress in 1870 and 1871 passed legislation to combat the Klan (see force bill). The Klan was especially strong in the mountain and Piedmont areas. In the Lower South the Knights of the White Camelia were dominant. That order, founded (1867) in Louisiana, is reputed to have had even more members than the Ku Klux Klan, but its membership was more conservative and its actions less spectacular. It had a similar divisional organization, with headquarters in New Orleans.
Sections in this article:
Introduction
The First Ku Klux Klan
The Second Ku Klux Klan
The Klan after World War II
Bibliography

STEALTH AIRCRAFT

2010-01-30T23:56:00.000-08:00

Stealth Aircraft

American aircraft designers began discussing applying stealth technology to airplanes in the 1940s. But it was not until the 1950s that they actually began designs that took into account an airplane's radar signature. The U-2 spyplane, which was started in late 1954 by Lockheed Aircraft under a contract with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), was intended to be stealthy largely by flying at a very high altitude. Its designers expected that Soviet air defense radar would not be capable of detecting aircraft that high, although U.S. radar certainly could. The designers were wrong about Soviet radar, however, and the first U-2s to fly over Soviet territory were immediately detected. This prompted U.S. radar and aircraft experts to evaluate a number of ways to reduce the radar signature of the airplane. Because the U-2's shape was already established, they focused on adding things to the airplane that would absorb or scatter the radar energy that reached the plane. These included a fine wire mesh that was molded over the plane and covered with a paint that contained iron, and wires strung from the nose to the tail. However, none of these efforts reduced the airplane's radar signature very much, some of them significantly reduced its performance, and all were abandoned.

In 1958, the CIA began studying a replacement for the U-2 that could fly at speeds above Mach 3. This aircraft, soon named OXCART (possibly an inside joke because it implied a vehicle that moved very slowly), was intended to fly very fast and very high. It would also have a small radar signature, meaning that it would appear as a very small object on a radar screen. Its designers hoped that its small size and high speed, so that it would move a great distance between each pass of the radar beam, would cause radar operators to think the radar blip was only "noise" in the radar signal. The single-pilot OXCART, which was also designated the A-12 and built by Lockheed, had a number of radar-reducing features. It was coated with special materials that absorbed radar energy. Designers also developed parts of its structure to "trap" radar energy and prevent it from traveling back to its source. In addition, they added a chemical to the aircraft's special fuel to reduce its radar signature. Overall, the OXCART had a relatively small radar signature, but it was still visible on radar. The Air Force soon developed the two-seat Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird based on the OXCART design, and the Lockheed D-21 TAGBOARD reconnaissance drone. Both aircraft incorporated stealthy features.

During this time—the late 1950s and early 1960s—aircraft designers and defense planners in the United States were extremely aware of the importance of an aircraft's radar signature to its survivability. North American Aviation's Mach 3 B-70 Valkyrie bomber was canceled in 1961 because, among its other many problems, it had an enormous radar signature and could be spotted on radar a great distance away. The U.S. Army and CIA developed what could be considered a stealthy helicopter during the Vietnam War. There, they were primarily interested in reducing the amount of noise that the helicopter generated, and they named the helicopter The Quiet One. Reducing the heat an aircraft generates is also important, and most battlefield helicopters include systems like mufflers to reduce the heat coming from the engine exhaust. Stealthy characteristics were incorporated into some small planes, but they were not heavily applied to aircraft during the 1960s. This was primarily because significantly reducing radar reflections was very difficult to model mathematically.

The Arab-Israeli war of 1973 startled many U.S. Air Force leaders because a large number of Israeli aircraft were shot down by Russian-built surface-to-air missiles in a very short period of time. The experience in Vietnam had earlier also prompted Defense Department leaders to seek new aircraft that were not so susceptible to attack from surface-to-air missiles. They realized that any conflict with the Soviet Union could result in a large portion of the U.S. Air Force being shot down in the early days of the war. This prompted them to begin looking for ways to avoid this.

In the 1970s, a U.S. mathematician working for Lockheed Aircraft used a mathematical model developed by Russian scientist Pyotr Ufimtsev to develop a computer program called Echo 1. Echo made it possible to predict the radar signature an aircraft made with flat panels, called facets. In 1975, Lockheed Skunk Works engineers determined that an airplane with faceted surfaces could have a remarkably low radar signature because the surfaces would radiate 99.9 percent of the radar energy away from the receiver. They built a model called "the Hopeless Diamond" because it looked like a squat diamond and looked too hopeless to ever fly. This work marked a substantial change from the past, because for the first time, designers realized that it might be possible to make an aircraft that was virtually invisible to radar.

In early 1977, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) gave Lockheed a contract to build and test two subscale models (about 60 percent of the size of an operational airplane) of a stealthy aircraft. The contract was known as Have Blue and was highly classified. Lockheed's plane looked like a squat pyramid with wings and two tails angled inward. When designers placed it on a tall pole outdoors and pointed a radar at it, it was virtually invisible. But they still wondered if it would fly. One Lockheed document stated that the "airframe exhibits just about every mode of unstable behavior possible for an aircraft—the only thing it doesn't do is tip back on its tail when it is parked."

Have Blue was not inherently stable in flight and would tumble out of control. But fortunately, computers also rendered this fact irrelevant, because aircraft designers for several years had been designing planes, like the F-16 fighter, that were kept stable by computers that constantly adjusted their flight controls in the same way that a person riding a bike is constantly making minute corrections to remain balanced. This same solution was applied to the Have Blue airplane. Lockheed engineers soon developed the Have Blue into a larger bomber aircraft given the designation F-117. Despite being designated a "fighter," the plane was always intended only to drop bombs, not fight other aircraft.

For the first time, every aspect of the F-117 was designed around stealth. For the plane's designers, reducing the radar signature was similar to the way that airplane designers of the 1920s had reduced drag: they identified the biggest causes of the problem and then eliminated them one by one. The cockpit, which is essentially a cavity that reflects radar in much the same way that an animal's eyes reflect light from a flashlight at night, was sharply angled and coated with a reflective material that deflected the radar energy in different directions. The airplane had no radar and its sensors and antennas could be retracted into the fuselage. The bombs, a major source of radar reflection on most airplanes, were stored internally in a bomb bay so that they reflected no radar energy. The inlets for the jet engines were covered with fine screens to prevent radar energy from reaching the face of the engine turbines. The exhaust was channeled through long narrow ducts lined with heat-absorbing material so that it was cooler by the time it exited the plane and therefore did not show up as well on heat detectors.

Five F-117 development aircraft were built and tested between 1981 and 1982. The first F-117 squadron was declared operational in 1983. Lockheed built a total of 59 F-117s for the Air Force. The F-117 was a highly secret aircraft during most of the 1980s. It was finally unveiled in 1989 and became famous in 1991 when it was used in heavily defended skies over Iraq during the Persian Gulf War. In 1999, an F-117 was shot down by a Russian-built missile over Yugoslavia, demonstrating that stealth was not invincible.

Although the F-117 is the most famous stealth aircraft, it was not the only one. Other stealth aircraft were designed and built during the 1980s. A weird and ugly-looking plane designated the Tacit Blue was built by Northrop and flown several times during the 1980s. It looked like an upside down bathtub with wings. Its purpose was to evaluate the possibility of flying behind enemy lines, but the plane proved difficult to fly and its mission soon proved unnecessary. The sole prototype was kept secret for years until it was finally placed in a museum. In the late 1980s, the U.S. Navy sought to develop an attack bomber designated the A-12 Avenger II (not to be confused with the A-12 OXCART), but it was never completed before it was canceled. Several drone aircraft, such as Lockheed's failed DarkStar, and Teledyne Ryan's semi-stealthy GlobalHawk, were also developed. During the 1990s the Army began development of the Sikorsky/Boeing RAH-66 Commanche helicopter, which incorporated technologies to reduce its radar and heat signature. The most successful stealth aircraft next to the F-117 is the B-2 Spirit bomber, first started in the late 1970s and not finished until the 1990s.

The B-2 bomber, which is much larger than the F-117, actually has an even smaller radar cross-section. Unlike the F-117, it is not angular. This was due to increasing computer power, which allowed designers to develop aircraft with smooth, rounded surfaces that achieved the same results as the flat, angled surfaces of the F-117. The F-22 Raptor interceptor, which first flew in the early 1990s, and the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), also share these characteristics. The French Rafale and European Eurofighter/Typhoon also have stealth features.
--Dwayne A. Day

UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECTS

2010-01-30T23:52:00.000-08:00

UFO Headline News
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Kennedy assassination linked to UFOs and CIA
Wednesday, June 10, 2009 at Wednesday, June 10, 2009 Posted by UFOsToday
On November 12, 1963, President John Kennedy issued two Presidential memoranda instructing NASA and the CIA to begin cooperating with the USSR on joint space missions including a lunar landing. On the same day, a conversation occurred between Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev on the importance of sharing information concerning UFOs as they moved forward with joint space missions. Leaked documents concerning the alleged conversation and the role of the CIA in controlling UFO information directly implicate the CIA in Kennedy’s assassination ten days later.In addition to the two Presidential memoranda cited earlier in this investigative series, another leaked document shows the extent to which Kennedy was prepared to cooperate with the Soviet Union in declassifying UFO files. The aim was to avoid the risk of a mistaken military confrontation over UFOs. The document is allegedly a Top Secret NSA intercept of a “Hot Line” conversation between President Kennedy and Soviet Premiere Nikita Khrushchev dated November 12, 1963. Kennedy and Khrushchev discussed the importance of their respective UFO working groups to deal with the UFO problem to avoid the risk of future conflict. Kennedy told Khrushchev: “I have begun an initiative with our NASA to exchange information with your Academy of Sciences in which I hope will foster mutual concern over this problem and hopefully find some resolution.” Kennedy was certainly referring here to the National Security Action Memorandum released on the same day, November 12 1963. Kennedy also said, “I have also instructed our CIA to provide me with full disclosure on the phantom aspects and classified programs in which I can better assess the [UFO] situation.” While the NSA intercept has not been conclusively determined to be authentic (it has been ranked medium-to-high level of authenticity), it is consistent with the November 12 National Security Action Memorandum 271 titled: “Cooperation with the USSR on Outer Space Matters."The risk of mistaken identification of UFOs leading to an accidental nuclear war was also allegedly considered by NATO at the same time. According to Robert Dean, a retired Command Sergeant Major who worked at NATO headquarters from 1963-1967, in 1964 NATO issued a Cosmic Top Secret document dealing with the threat posed by UFOs being confused with a nuclear first strike by the Soviet Union. Titled simply “The Assessment,” Dean said that it was feared that mistaken UFO sightings could start an accidental nuclear war. Dean’s statement validates the content of the alleged Hotline transcript and gives support to its authenticity.

Racially Mixed People

2010-01-30T11:29:00.000-08:00

Bill of Rights for Racially Mixed PeopleBy Maria P.P. Root

I HAVE THE RIGHT...
-Not to justify my existence in this world. -Not to keep the races separate within me. -Not to be responsible for people's discomfort with my physical ambiguity. -Not to justify my ethnic legitimacy.
I HAVE THE RIGHT...
-To identify myself differently than strangers expect me to identify.-To identify myself differently from how my parents identify me.-To identify myself differently from my brothers and sisters.-To identify myself differently in different situations.
I HAVE THE RIGHT...
-To create a vocabulary to communicate about being multiracial.-To change my identity over my lifetime -- and more than once.-To have loyalties and identification with more than one group of people.-To freely choose whom I befriend and love

Maria P. P. Root, PhD, is author of"The Multiracial Experience: Racial Borders as the New Frontier"

RACIALLY MIXED CHILDREN

2010-01-30T11:24:00.000-08:00

A New American Tribe - racially mixed people abound in modern society - Brief Article
Commonweal, Sept 12, 1997 by Peter Feuerherd
123Next ..Intermarriage & the racial divide

President Bill Clinton has urged Americans to talk with their families and friends about race relations. I took him up on that offer one recent summer afternoon at a pizza restaurant in Queens, New York.

"We outnumber them," I told my wife and two children as I looked around the place. My voice suggested surprise. I think it was the first time it's happened in a public place. "We," in our case, means interracial families. "Them" is everyone else. I looked around that restaurant and saw a couple with a cute interracial baby, a European man gazing into the eyes of a beautiful woman who appeared to be from India, and other couples composed of mixed hues and shades.

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My pale visage, my wife's darker visage, and those of our two teen-age children, which fall somewhere in between, were just another part of the scene. We have become part of a quiet revolution that is no longer so quiet. Two decades ago when my wife and I married, the worried looks of some were apparent. "What about the children?" was a regular question we faced, forcing us to contemplate the specter of producing offspring who would never fit comfortably anywhere.

Now American society has produced a revolution with huge consequences about our age-old bugaboo of race relations. While the media are full of tales of bigotry and bickering, of Minister Farrakhan preaching race separatism, of radio talk-show hosts competing for the booby prize of who can be the most ethnically insensitive, of crosses burning and swastikas displayed on the lawns and houses of suburban neighborhoods, there is something else happening. Those of different races have proceeded to fall in love and produce what has become a new American tribe.
It's become almost chic. Interracial celebrities such as Tiger Woods, Halle Berry, and Mariah Carey are lionized for their talents and, important in this superficial culture, physical beauty. The meaning of Tiger Woods's ascendancy in golf has been well-documented, particularly his coining of the word "Cablinasian" to describe his Caucasian, African-American, Native American, and Asian heritage. But he's not the only sign in popular culture. New York Yankees' rookie-of-the-year shortstop Derek Jeter--who grew up in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and is the son of a black man and white woman--is written about in glowing terms as a symbol that the 1996 world champs have shed their stuffy, nearly-all white image and have been truly embraced by all of their city's ethnic mosaic.

PROSTITUTION

2010-01-30T11:19:00.000-08:00

Prostitution and Racism Articles

Aboriginal Women's Statement on Legal Prostitution, Canada

December 6, 2007

As Aboriginal women on occupied Coast Salish Territory, we, the Aboriginal Women's Action Network (AWAN) implore you to pay attention to the voices of Aboriginal women and women's groups who are speaking out in the interest of our sisters, our daughters, our friends and all women whose voices have not been heard in the recent media discussion on prostitution and legalized brothels for the 2010 Olympics.

Continue reading "Aboriginal Women's Statement on Legal Prostitution, Canada"

Reclaiming Their Lives and Breaking Free:
An Afrocentric Approach to Recovery From Prostitution

Valandra 2007

Little research has examined the specific healing needs of prostituted African American women. In this qualitative research study, eight African American women who were receiving culturally specific services at an Afrocentric agency participated in a focus group and in-depth semistructured interviews.

Continue reading "Reclaiming Their Lives and Breaking Free:
An Afrocentric Approach to Recovery From Prostitution"

Prostitution in Vancouver: Violence and the Colonization of First Nations Women

Melissa Farley, Jacqueline Lynne, Ann J. Cotton 2005

Researchers interviewed 100 women prostituting in Vancouver, Canada. They found an extremely high prevalence of lifetime violence and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) along with a high percentage of histories of childhood sexual assault. . Findings are discussed in terms of the legacy of colonialism, the intrinsically traumatizing nature of prostitution and prostitution’s violations of basic human rights.

Continue reading "Prostitution in Vancouver: Violence and the Colonization of First Nations Women"

Prostitution and Trafficking of Women and Children from Mexico to the United States

Marisa B. Ugarte, Laura Zarate, and Melissa Farley 2003

In this article, researchers describe the historical background of sex trafficking from Mexico to the United States. Researchers summarize two case examples that illustrate the complexity of providing physical and emotional safety, as well as immigration protection to victims of trafficking into prostitution. Researchers emphasize the importance of understanding the varied cultural contexts in which sexual exploitation, rape, prostitution and trafficking occur.

Continue reading "Prostitution and Trafficking of Women and Children from Mexico to the United States"

Colonialism and the Sexual Exploitation of Canada's First Nations Women

Jackie Lynne 1998

First Nations or Aboriginal women in Canadian prostitution are harmed today because of the legacies of colonialism. This article goes into some of the historical roots of this issue.

Continue reading "Colonialism and the Sexual Exploitation of Canada's First Nations Women"

Prostitution: Where Raciscm and Sexism Intersect

Vednita Nelson 1993
A discussion about how racism channels African American women into prostitution, and once they are in prostitution - even there, they are discriminated against. Racism always affects women in prostitution, just as racism affects Women of Color everyplace else in society.

GRAFFITI

2009-12-31T16:43:00.000-08:00

Graffiti Art: An Essay Concerning The Recognition of Some Forms of Graffiti As Art
George C. Stowers gstowers@students.miami.edu
Prof. Goldman
Phil 651 Aesthetics
Fall 1997

Overview
Graffiti art is an art form. The reasons, including aesthetic criteria, as to why it is an art form far outweigh the criticism of illegality, incoherence, and nonstandard presentation. The objective of this paper is to explain how graffiti art overcomes these concerns and thereby can be considered as an art form.

Suppose that Leonardo, Monet, Picasso, or any of the recognized artisans of Western European culture were alive in the present day. Then, suppose that one of these famous artists decided to paint a masterpiece on the side of your house or on your front door or on a wall in your neighborhood. Would Picasso or Monet's markings be graffiti or art or vandalism or graffiti art? The answer may vary across people, but I would claim that those markings are art in the form of graffiti. Their markings would qualify as vandalism only if they appeared on private or public property without permission. The same answer holds for the present day, genre of graffiti known as graffiti art.

Graffiti art originated in the late 1960's, and it has been developing ever since. However, it is not readily accepted as being art like those works that are found in a gallery or a museum. It is not strictly denied the status of genuine art because of a lack of form or other base aesthetic elements. Most of the opposition to graffiti art is due to its location and bold, unexpected, and unconventional presentation, but its presentation and often illegal location does not necessarily disqualify it as art. In this paper, I elucidate how some forms of graffiti can be accepted as art. This type of graffiti is known as graffiti art, subway art, or spraycan art. The arguments of vandalism and unconventional presentation as negating the ability of some graffiti to be art is usurped by an explanation of those properties apparent in some forms of graffiti that do qualify it, aesthetically, as art. To show this, I provide a historical context of graffiti, and then I provide persuasive evidence that graffiti art is art.

The origins of graffiti go back to the beginnings of human, societal living. Graffiti has been found on uncovered, ancient, Egyptian monuments, and graffiti even was preserved on walls in Pompeii. Graffiti is the plural form of the Italian word grafficar. In plural, grafficar signifies drawings, markings, patterns, scribbles, or messages that are painted, written, or carved on a wall or surface. Grafficar also signifies "to scratch" in reference to different wall writings ranging from "cave paintings", bathroom scribbles, or any message that is scratched on walls. In reference to present day graffiti, the definition is qualified by adding that graffiti is also any unsolicited marking on a private or public property that is usually considered to be vandalism.

There are various forms of graffiti. One of the simplest forms is that of individual markings such as slogans, slurs, or political statements. Examples of this type of graffiti commonly are found in bathrooms or on exterior surfaces, and this graffiti is usually handwritten. Another simple form is that of the tag which is a fancy, scribble-like writing of one's name or nick-name. That is, tag signifies one's name or nick-name.

Both the tag or individual mark have little or no aesthetic appeal. While they might suggest a flair or style of writing, these forms fail to qualify as example of superb graffiti art because of a lack of aesthetic qualities and inability to produce a maximal aesthetic feeling in the viewer. In fact, the tag or individual mark is not produced for artistic purposes. It is basically a means to indicate the writer's presence, i.e., the age old statement of "I was here." Gang markings of territory also fit the definition of graffiti, and they mainly consists of tags and messages that provide "news" of happenings in the neighborhood. Murals for community enhancement and beautification are also a form of graffiti even though they are not usually thought of this way because most murals are commissioned. These are more colorful and complex. They take considerable amount of skill to complete, and murals can be done in a graffiti art style or a traditional pictorial scene. The last form of graffiti is graffiti art which is the creative use of spraypaint to produce an artwork that is graffiti or done in a graffiti-like style, and this the is the concern of this discussion.

Modern graffiti art originated in New York City, and it was known first as "New York Style" graffiti. This art form began in the late 1960's when teens used permanent markers to tag or write their names, followed by the number of the street on which they lived, in subway cars. This trend originated with the appearance of "Taki 183" which was the tag of a Greek American boy named Demitrius. Tagging soon became a way to get one's name known throughout the city. However, it should be noted that tagging appeared in Philadelphia before New York. The monikers, "Cornbread" and "Top Cat" were well known in Philadelphia, and when Top Cat's style appeared in New York, it was dubbed as "Broadway Style" for its long skinny lettering.

The advent of the spraypaint allowed for the tag to develop in size and color. For it was not enough just to have one's name scrawled over any available and visible surface because everyone was doing this. The spraycan separated the taggers from the artists in that color, form, and style could be emphasized creatively with this new tool to produce s tag as a part of an overall artistic production. The tag which is monochromatic and a writing style that just about anyone can do, gave way to the throw-up, which is a two color tag usually in outline or bubble-like lettering. Again this style is not too difficult, but soon more complicated styles evolved. The stamp is a little harder and involves the use straight letters to produce a 3-D effect. The piece, which is short for masterpiece, appeared next, and it is a large multicolor work. A production is a piece that is usually on the scale of a mural, and it involves original or familiar cartoon characters in addition to the writer or graffiti artist's name. It should be noted that every graffiti form listed involves the artist's name, whether as the central feature or as an ornament within the piece because writers want to be known. Hence, finding new and creative ways to display one's tag in a highly visible place, as opposed to just scribbling it everywhere, was the fundamental force spurring the development of modern graffiti art.

In the middle to late 1970's, writers started painting subway trains; thus the name, subway art. Train painting was instrumental to the development of graffiti art because the trains became the stage for the style wars which was a time when everyone who wanted to be recognized as the best artist or the "King" or "Queen" of a subway line got- up, i.e., painted trains as often as possible. If one's name was on a train in a colorful and unique style, it was guaranteed to be seen by many people; most importantly by the other writers, because the subway trains in New York City travel in circuits throughout different boroughs. To be a "King" or "Queen" one could not just get-up or simply paint his or her name in a thousand different places. On the contrary, style and artistic talent were and continue to be extremely important. The goal was and is to create burners which are pieces that stand out because of creativity, color, vibrancy, crisp outlines, i.e. no drips, and overall artistic appeal. It is the recognizable artistic talent of the graffiti artist that established his or her reign on the subway line and not just the appearance of s name in a thousand different places. The styles that emerged with the previously mentioned forms during this time were round popcorn or bubble letters, wildstyle which is an intricate, interlocking type of calligraphy that is difficult and almost impossible to read, computer and gothic lettering, 3-D lettering, fading which blends colors, and the use of cartoon characters. The ability to produce complicated pieces is what separates the tagger from the graffiti artist; graffitist for short. Taggers scribble and graffitists do art.

The high visibility of the train and the potential audience encouraged more artists to participate in this new form of art. Despite New York City's vigorous anti-graffiti efforts the style flourished and soon influenced artists in cities all over the world. The biggest promotional vehicle for graffiti art worldwide has been the Hip-Hop phenomenon which is the culture associated with rap music.

Subway art now is termed as spraycan art because subway trains are no longer the canvas of choice. Besides, every graffitist could not possibly do all of his or her work on subway cars because of laws, police, and the dangerous environment of the subway yards and lay-up stations. Ironically, the latest innovation in spraycan art has been that of "freight art" in which graffitists paint railroad, freight cars with the expectation that their artwork will travel across the United States and throughout the continent.

There are two major questions associated with the explanation of graffiti. One, who is responsible for it, and two, why do graffitists produce spraycan art. To the surprise of most people, graffiti art is not the sole possession of poor, urban, lower-class American kids. Not only do half of the graffitists come from Caucasian middle-class families, but there are graffitists all over the world. When asked, "What sorts of kids write graffiti?", police officer Kevin Hickey of the New York Transit Police Department's graffiti squad replied, "The type of kids that live in New York City." They range from the ultra-rich to the ultra-poor. There is no general classification of the kids Graffitist range in age from 12-30 years old, and there are male and female artists. In the past, graffiti artists usually worked alone, but the size and complexity of pieces as well as safety concerns motivated artists to work together in crews, which are groups of graffitists that vary in membership from 3 to 10 or more persons. A member of a crew can be down with, i.e., affiliated, with more than one crew. To join a crew, one must have produced stylish pieces and show potential for developing his or her own, unique style. A crew is headed by a king or queen who is usually that person recognized as having the best artistic ability among the members of the crew.

The reasons and values for why one might engage in graffiti art are as varied as the artists who produce it. A chief reason is the prospect of fame and recognition of one's artistic talent. Graffiti is also a form of self expression. The art as "writing" is a creative method of communicating with other writers and the general public. What it communicates is the artist's identity, expression, and ideas. Judgments are based solely on one's artistic ability. This type of communication is of value because it links people regardless of cultural, lingual, or racial differences in way that nothing else can. In addition, producing graffiti art with a crew builds team work in that the crew works together for the accomplishment of a common goal. The feeling of this achievement in league with others is of value to the artist. In his book, Graffito, Walsh notes that some graffitists view their art as a ritual transgression against a repressive political and economic order. For some artists see themselves as revolutionaries reacting against the established art market or gallery system in that art is not only that which appears in the gallery as determined by the curator. Some artists also view their creations on public and private spaces as a statement against Western ideas of capitalism and private property. Of course, the majority of graffitists enjoy what they do and find it to be fun, rewarding, and exciting. Although these reasons are valid, they do not conclusively settle the matter as to why graffiti art is art or why it is a valid art form despite its illegal origins.

Graffiti as seen and experienced on the New York City subway trains and that which developed into the modern-day form of spraycan art is art. The production of graffiti art includes established techniques and styles, and the art form also is characterized by a standard medium; spraypaint.

For example, novices are taught how to use spraypaint according to various styles and how to adjust nozzles as well as how to fit and use other types of aerosol caps onto spraycans for different artistic effects. The forms of graffiti art have developed through the years from the mere gestures of tagging to established conventional practices of the graffiti art world such as creating the tag according to a method, like wildstyle, that makes it an integral, flowing element of the overall piece.

In addition, graffiti art is not a spontaneous activity like tagging in the form of fancy scribble. The completion of a piece or a production involves a great deal of imagination, planning, and effort.

The graffitist first does a sketch. Then he or she plans out characters and selects colors. Next, the artist selects his or her "canvas" or surface and does a preliminary outline, followed by a filling in of colors and ornamentation, and then the final outline is completed.

Graffiti can also be analyzed according to the elements of lines, color, and structures that are present in the work in order to produce a narrative about it. Another significant reason why graffiti art can be viewed as art is by considering the producer's intention. Graffitists intend their work to be apprehended as art that can communicate feelings and ideas to the audience. This is in line with Tolstoy's mandate that art must allow people to express ideas and share in each other's feelings via the artwork.

Plus, graffiti art has a function of not only communicating to others, but it also beautifies the community by appearing on areas that normally would be eyesores, such as a wall in a vacant lot or an abandoned building. Furthermore, all of the aesthetic properties and criteria from the base element of color to the complex issue of artist intention which are ascribed to other works in order to characterize them as art can all be found in examples of spraycan art. The only difference between those works in a gallery or museum and graffiti art in terms of how and why the latter is not readily accepted as art is due to its location and presentation.

Indeed the issues of location and presentation are the most significant obstacles to a wholehearted acceptance of spraycan art as art. Graffiti art cannot be disregarded simply because it is not presented in the conventional location and manner, i.e., framed and placed in a museum or gallery. The location of it on a wall or subway without permission only makes it unsolicited art. As such, it can be called vandalism, but again, this does not disqualify it as art.

Rather the categorization of graffiti art as unsolicited art that is vandalism only justifies a removal of it from the surface. On the other hand, the vandalism aspect of graffiti art can be considered as a uniqueness and not a detracting feature of the art form because as vandalism, graffiti art is very temporary. A piece which might be sixty feet long, twelve feet high, and take twenty to thirty cans of paint and at least eight hours to produce might be gone in a matter of minutes.

Another challenge to graffiti art is that it is forced upon the public because people have no say in its production despite the fact that public funds are used to remove it. Graffitists counter with the argument that buildings, billboards, campaign ads, and flyers are also forced on the public in a similar manner.

Spraycan art suffers other criticisms because of the generic characterization of all graffiti as being gang related and simply a matter of tagging. However, only 20% of graffiti is gang related [ed. note: according to Walsh, who mentions this number in _Graffito_. Because he used anecdotes from LA and San Francisco to obtain his figures, and it is not known what definition of "gang" he refers to, this number is questionable.], and it should be noted that not all instances of graffiti art are good examples of the art form; just like not all framed artistic creations are good examples of painting or even worthy of being called art.

Graffiti is also criticized for being too hard to understand, but certainly this cannot keep graffiti art from being art anymore than the obscurity of abstract art or Picasso's cubism prevents either one of those hard to understand art forms from being considered as art. Goldman's aesthetic theory is of use to clarify the problem of location and presentation in relation to graffiti art.

Goldman claims that art takes us to other worlds in a manner that is quite fulfilling sensually and aesthetically. This removal from the real world is enhanced by the mood of the gallery or the dark setting of the opera house. Most of the time when we encounter art and are transported by it to other worlds, we are in a location in which we expect this to happen. However, this is not the case with graffiti art. For it appears suddenly and in unexpected places. Thus, when we apprehend it, we are transported to these other worlds at a time and in a place that we are not accustomed to doing so.

We are not used to art approaching us outside of conventional settings such as a museum. Instead of the audience going to view the art form, spraycan art reaches out to the viewer; sometimes in a startling manner. One can only imagine how shocking and surprising it might have been to see a colorful train moving swiftly through the dingy stations and drab boroughs of New York City. Spraycan art is an art form that is completely open to the public because it is not hemmed in by the confines or "laws" of the gallery system or the museum. Perhaps, this is its only crime.

The institutional theory, in brief, mandates that art is that which is displayed by the art world to be accepted as art as determined by the members of the art world. Since graffiti art is not permanently established in any galleries or museums, often it is argued that it is not art, but even this criticism falls short because there are instances where the art world has recognized graffiti art as art. In the 1970's, galleries in New York and Europe brought graffiti to the attention of the art world.

Lee Quinones, a prominent writer in New York and one of the few graffitists to bomb, i.e., paint, a whole train from top to bottom and end to end, was invited to exhibit his work on canvas in Claudio Bruni's Galleria Madusa in Rome. Likewise, Yaki Kornblit of Denmark, an art dealer, helped to launch the careers of several graffitists during the years of 1984 and 1985 at Museum Boyanano von Beuningen in Rotterdam. Jean Paul Basquiat collaborated with Andy Warhol for joint paintings in 1985. And recently, in 1996, Barry McGee, also known by his tag, "Twist", was commissioned to do a graffiti art mural for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

As graffiti was introduced to the art world, two trends happened. One, the art world of collectors, dealers, curators, artists, and the like helped graffitists evolve in style, presumably by sharing their artistic knowledge with the newcomers. Two, the exposure helped to expand graffiti to all parts of the world.

Furthermore, cities such as LA and Chicago have recognized the talent of graffitists by providing a means for them to do legal graffiti art which has helped to foster the art form and lessened the amount of graffiti art that appears in the city as vandalism.

Likewise, organizations of graffiti artists such as the Phun Factory or the United Graffiti Artists in New York solicit places to do legal graffiti such as abandoned buildings, businesses, or community walls in parks. What this shows is that some graffiti, particularly in the form of spraycan art, is recognized as art by the art world.

This recognition of graffiti art by the art world is important for two reasons. One because of the social, political, and economic influence of the art world, its recognition of graffiti art as art helps to increase the awareness and overall understanding of the art form. Two, this recognition prevents the sweeping generalization that all graffiti is vandalism and therefore something that always should be eradicated. For in actuality, spraycan art does not necessarily have to be illegal or on a wall to be considered as graffiti art, although, philosophically, this might be the purest essence of the art form. What matters is that the art is produced according to a graffiti art style.

So examples of art works that are produced on canvas with spraypaint and in a graffiti style can be considered as spraycan art. And the exhortation that graffiti should be on a visible private or public space in order to be in its optimal context is not so much to glorify any illegalities but rather, to highlight the idea that graffiti is meant to be completely accessible to the public for immediate appreciation.

Also, the increasing acceptance of graffiti art is not due so much to its adoption of traditional techniques. On the contrary, books, magazines, movies, and the artists themselves have helped people to understand how and where graffiti harmonizes with and goes a step beyond traditional methods.

For example, wildstyle changes with each artist's interpretation of the alphabet, but it also relies on the use of primary colors, fading, foreground and background, and the like to create these letters. Thus, it is important and valuable to characterize some forms of graffiti as art because this challenges people, who are conditioned to accept art works as art only if they are created in a traditional manner and appear in institutional setting, to appreciate art works that originate and develop outside of these constraints. In doing so, people come to realize graffiti is not an art form that is done just for the sake of rebellious destruction. Quite the opposite, it is an innovative and truly original art form that is meant to bring an aesthetic pleasure to the audience like any other recognized art form.

In summary, some forms of graffiti become art according to four criteria. First, graffiti art is separated from everyday graffiti markings by the artist's intention to produce a work of art. Second, graffiti art has an established history of development in style and technique. Third, graffiti art even has been recognized by the art world. A fourth criterion is that the public response to graffiti art indicates that it is art. Whether or not all of the public agrees that graffiti art is good, bad, or extremely valuable is a different discussion about evaluation and not whether or not graffiti art is art. The evaluative concerns actually play more into where, when, and how graffiti art should be displayed.

The above criteria are defensible in so much as they have been used to legitimize other artistic forms. However, what appears to be the most significant answer to describing how and why graffiti art is art is the notion of understanding where the artist and the audience synchronize in agreement about a particular work being an example of art. It is a matter of comprehending what makes a creation art for the artist and what makes this same creation art for the audience. When and according to what criteria that these two viewpoints coincide is what thoroughly determines graffiti art as art. And like other art forms, graffiti art is definitively art when both the artist and the audience agree on the works ability to provide maximal aesthetic satisfaction. While it is almost impossible to formulate a theory of necessary conditions or rules specifying when graffiti art is art, I think it is sufficient to draw on already established aesthetic theories and criteria to point out that some forms of graffiti do qualify as art.

Therefore, graffiti in the form of spraycan art is art. It has form, color, and other base properties as well as an arrangement of these elements into structures that qualify it aesthetically as being art. Just doing something with spraypaint might make it graffiti, but it does not necessarily qualify it as art or graffiti art. In addition, when the spraycan art is analyzed according to the artist's intention and value to audience, there is even more evidence to suggest that it is genuine art. The only obstacle that has hindered the general acceptance of graffiti art is its location and presentation. However, the instances of acceptance of graffiti art by the art world shows that conventional methods of presentation are not all that matters in determining if something is art. And graffiti art is not to be disqualified as art simply because it might appear unsolicited. In short, graffiti in the form of spray can art is art like any other work that might be found in a gallery or a museum.

References
Castleman, Craig. Getting Up. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1982.

Castllen, Rolando (Curator). Aesthetics of Graffiti April 28- July 2, 1978. San Francisco:

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1978.

Chalfant, H. and Prigoff, J. Spraycan Art. London: Thames and Hudson, 1987.

Cooper, M. and Chalfant, H. Subway Art. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1984.

Dickie, G., Scalfani, R., and Roblin, R. Aesthetics: A Critical Anthology. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989.

Goldman, A. Aesthetic Value. Boulder: Westview Press, 1995.

Spitz, Ellen H. Image and Insight. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991.

Walsh, Michael. Graffito. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1996.

Whitford, M.J. Getting Rid of Graffiti. London: E & FN Spon, 1992.

http://www.graffiti.org

http://www.martinezgallery.com

Whitford, M.J. Getting Rid of Graffiti. London: E &FN Spon, 1992, pg. 2.

Whitford, pg. 1.

Chalfant, H. and Prigoff, J. Spraycan Art. London: Thames and Hudson, 1987, pg. 42.

Walsh, Michael. Graffito. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1996, pg. 12.

Whitford, pg. xii.

Walsh, pg. 11.

Castleman, Craig. Getting Up. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1982, pg.67.

Castleman, pg. 11.

Chalfant, H. and Prigoff, J., pg. 91.

Castleman, pg. 51.

Walsh, pg. 3.

Walsh, pg. 3.

Cooper, M. and Chalfant, H. Subway Art. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1984, pg. 32.

Dickie, G., Scalfani, R., and Roblin, R. Aesthetics: A Critical Anthology. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989, pgs. 57-8.

Chalfant, H. and Prigoff, J., pg. 10.

Goldman, A. Aesthetic Value. Boulder: Westview Press, 1995, pgs. 8-9.

Chalfant, H. and Prigoff, J., pg. 7.

Chalfant, H. and Prigoff, J., pg. 7.

Whitford, pg. 2.

Quotes are from: Cooper, M. and Chalfant, H. Subway Art. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1984 & Walsh, Michael. Graffito. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1996.
George C. Stowers gstowers@students.miami.edu

AGE DISCRIMINATION IN EMPLOYMENT

2009-12-31T16:37:00.000-08:00

Half of over-55 jobless still looking for work after six months.

Hire Yourself!
By Elizabeth Pope

Nearly a quarter of age 55-plus workers who were laid off last year say they're considering starting their own business.

Age Bias? Prove It.
From Inside E Street

A recent Supreme Court case created a tougher burden of proof for plaintiffs in age bias cases. That decision may cause a ripple effect in other types of discrimination disputes.

From the Online Community

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Straight Answers About Unemployment Compensation
By Bob Skladany

Learn how receiving unemployment benefits affects Social Security retirement payments.

Should I Sign Up for Pre-Tax Benefits?
By Bob Skladany

Around this time of the year, we get reminders to sign up for benefits at the office. Some benefits are paid with pre-tax dollars instead of after-tax dollars. What does that mean, and what are the consequences of pre-tax deductions and contributions?

Real Relief
In these uncertain economic times, AARP and the AARP Foundation stand ready to help you stay focused on your long-term financial goals while providing you with immediate solutions and assistance.

5 Quick Résumé Fixes
By Bob Skladany

Apply these final touches to target your résumé for the specific job you want.

What to Do If You've Lost Your Job
By AARP Education & Outreach

Use this checklist for suggestions on immediate steps to take along with longer-term ideas for dealing with unemployment.

What to Do if Your Former Employer Goes Bankrupt
By AARP Education & Outreach

If your former employer goes bankrupt, it could affect two important benefits that you might have: defined benefit pension plan benefits and retiree health benefits.

AGE DISCRIMINATION

2009-12-31T16:35:00.000-08:00

Facts About Age Discrimination
The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA) protects individuals who are 40 years of age or older from employment discrimination based on age. The ADEA’s protections apply to both employees and job applicants. Under the ADEA, it is unlawful to discriminate against a person because of his/her age with respect to any term, condition, or privilege of employment, including hiring, firing, promotion, layoff, compensation, benefits, job assignments, and training. The ADEA permits employers to favor older workers based on age even when doing so adversely affects a younger worker who is 40 or older.
It is also unlawful to retaliate against an individual for opposing employment practices that discriminate based on age or for filing an age discrimination charge, testifying, or participating in any way in an investigation, proceeding, or litigation under the ADEA.
The ADEA applies to employers with 20 or more employees, including state and local governments. It also applies to employment agencies and labor organizations, as well as to the federal government. ADEA protections include:
Apprenticeship Programs
It is generally unlawful for apprenticeship programs, including joint labor-management apprenticeship programs, to discriminate on the basis of an individual’s age. Age limitations in apprenticeship programs are valid only if they fall within certain specific exceptions under the ADEA or if the EEOC grants a specific exemption.
Job Notices and Advertisements
The ADEA generally makes it unlawful to include age preferences, limitations, or specifications in job notices or advertisements. A job notice or advertisement may specify an age limit only in the rare circumstances where age is shown to be a “bona fide occupational qualification” (BFOQ) reasonably necessary to the normal operation of the business.
Pre-Employment Inquiries
The ADEA does not specifically prohibit an employer from asking an applicant’s age or date of birth. However, because such inquiries may deter older workers from applying for employment or may otherwise indicate possible intent to discriminate based on age, requests for age information will be closely scrutinized to make sure that the inquiry was made for a lawful purpose, rather than for a purpose prohibited by the ADEA.
Benefits
The Older Workers Benefit Protection Act of 1990 (OWBPA) amended the ADEA to specifically prohibit employers from denying benefits to older employees. Congress recognized that the cost of providing certain benefits to older workers is greater than the cost of providing those same benefits to younger workers, and that those greater costs would create a disincentive to hire older workers. Therefore, in limited circumstances, an employer may be permitted to reduce benefits based on age, as long as the cost of providing the reduced benefits to older workers is the same as the cost of providing benefits to younger workers. Employers are permitted to coordinate retiree health benefit plans with eligibility for Medicare or a comparable state-sponsored health benefit.
Waivers of ADEA Rights
An employer may ask an employee to waive his/her rights or claims under the ADEA either in the settlement of an ADEA administrative or court claim or in connection with an exit incentive program or other employment termination program. However, the ADEA, as amended by OWBPA, sets out specific minimum standards that must be met in order for a waiver to be considered knowing and voluntary and, therefore, valid. Among other requirements, a valid ADEA waiver must:
be in writing and be understandable;
specifically refer to ADEA rights or claims;
not waive rights or claims that may arise in the future;
be in exchange for valuable consideration;
advise the individual in writing to consult an attorney before signing the waiver; and
provide the individual at least 21 days to consider the agreement and at least seven days to revoke the agreement after signing it.
If an employer requests an ADEA waiver in connection with an exit incentive program or other employment termination program, the minimum requirements for a valid waiver are more extensive.

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION PROGRAMS

2009-12-31T16:32:00.000-08:00

Ten Myths About Affirmative Action

This article is an updated version of a 1996 essay first published in the Journal of Social Issues (volume 52, pages 25-31). The complete citation for the updated version is: Plous, S. (2003). Ten myths about affirmative action. In S. Plous (Ed.), Understanding Prejudice and Discrimination (pp. 206-212). New York: McGraw-Hill.

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years, affirmative action has been debated more intensely than at any other time in its 35-year history. Many supporters view affirmative action as a milestone, many opponents see it as a millstone, and many others regard it as both or neither -- as a necessary, but imperfect, remedy for an intractable social disease. My own view is that the case against affirmative action is weak, resting, as it does so heavily, on myth and misunderstanding. Here are some of the most popular myths about affirmative action, along with a brief commentary on each one.

Myth 1: The only way to create a color-blind society is to adopt color-blind policies.
Although this statement sounds intuitively plausible, the reality is that color-blind policies often put racial minorities at a disadvantage. For instance, all else being equal, color-blind seniority systems tend to protect White workers against job layoffs, because senior employees are usually White (Ezorsky, 1991). Likewise, color-blind college admissions favor White students because of their earlier educational advantages. Unless preexisting inequities are corrected or otherwise taken into account, color-blind policies do not correct racial injustice -- they reinforce it.

Myth 2: Affirmative action has not succeeded in increasing female and minority representation.
Several studies have documented important gains in racial and gender equality as a direct result of affirmative action (Bowen & Bok, 1998; Murrell & Jones, 1996). For example, according to a report from the U.S. Labor Department, affirmative action has helped 5 million minority members and 6 million White and minority women move up in the workforce ("Reverse Discrimination," 1995). Likewise, a study sponsored by the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs showed that between 1974 and 1980 federal contractors (who were required to adopt affirmative action goals) added Black and female officials and managers at twice the rate of noncontractors (Citizens' Commission, 1984). There have also been a number of well-publicized cases in which large companies (e.g., AT&T, IBM, Sears Roebuck) increased minority employment as a result of adopting affirmative action policies.

Myth 3: Affirmative action may have been necessary 30 years ago, but the playing field is fairly level today.
Despite the progress that has been made, the playing field is far from level. Women continue to earn 76 cents for every male dollar (Bowler, 1999). Black people continue to have twice the unemployment rate of White people, twice the rate of infant mortality, and just over half the proportion of people who attend four years or more of college (see Figure 1). In fact, without affirmative action the percentage of Black students at many selective schools would drop to only 2% of the student body (Bowen & Bok, 1998). This would effectively choke off Black access to top universities and severely restrict progress toward racial equality.

Myth 4: The public doesn't support affirmative action anymore.
Public opinion polls suggest that the majority of Americans support affirmative action, especially when the polls avoid an all-or-none choice between affirmative action as it currently exists and no affirmative action whatsoever (see Table 1). For example, a Time/CNN poll found that 80% of the public felt "affirmative action programs for minorities and women should be continued at some level" (Roper Center for Public Opinion, 1995a). What the public opposes are quotas, set-asides, and "reverse discrimination." For instance, when the same poll asked people whether they favored programs "requiring businesses to hire a specific number or quota of minorities and women," 63% opposed such a plan (Roper Center for Public Opinion, 1995b). As these results indicate, most members of the public oppose racial preferences that violate notions of procedural justice -- they do not oppose affirmative action.

Survey Results Suggesting Majority Support for Affirmative Action
Item Sourcea Responses in %
Do you favor or oppose affirmative action programs for minorities and women for job hiring in the workplace? Gallupb
Date: 8/01
Size: 1,523
Favor: 58
Oppose: 36
Don't know/Refused: 5

Do you favor or oppose affirmative action programs for minorities and women for admission to colleges and universities? Gallupc
Date: 8/01
Size: 1,523
Favor: 56
Oppose: 39
Don't know/Refused: 6

In general, do you think we need to increase, keep the same, or decrease affirmative action programs in this country? Gallupd
Date: 7/01
Size: 2,004
Increase: 27
Keep the same: 34
Decrease: 30
Don't know/Refused: 9

Do you generally favor or oppose affirmative action programs for women and minorities? CNN/USA Todaye
Date: 1/00
Size: 1,027
Favor: 58
Oppose: 33
Not sure: 9

What's the best thing to do with affirmative action programs giving preference to some minorities -- leave the programs as they are, change the programs, or do away with the programs entirely? CBS/NY Timesf
Date: 12/97
Size: 1,258
Leave as are: 24
Keep but change: 43
Do away with: 25
Not sure: 8

What about affirmative action programs that set quotas ... Do you favor affirmative action programs with quotas, or do you favor affirmative action programs only without quotas, or do you oppose all affirmative action programs? Associated Pressg
Date:7/95
Size:1,006
Favor with quotas: 16
Favor without quotas: 47
Oppose all: 28
Don't know: 9

aAll polls are from the Roper Center for Public Opinion [RCPO]. bRCPO (2001a). cRCPO (2001b). dRCPO (2001c). eRCPO (2000). fRCPO (1997). gRCPO (1995c).

Myth 5: A large percentage of White workers will lose out if affirmative action is continued.
Government statistics do not support this myth. According to the U.S. Commerce Department, there are 1.3 million unemployed Black civilians and 112 million employed White civilians (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2000). Thus, even if every unemployed Black worker in the United States were to displace a White worker, only 1% of Whites would be affected. Furthermore, affirmative action pertains only to job-qualified applicants, so the actual percentage of affected Whites would be a fraction of 1%. The main sources of job loss among White workers have to do with factory relocations and labor contracting outside the United States, computerization and automation, and corporate downsizing (Ivins, 1995).

Myth 6: If Jewish people and Asian Americans can rapidly advance economically, African Americans should be able to do the same.
This comparison ignores the unique history of discrimination against Black people in America. As historian Roger Wilkins has pointed out, Blacks have a 375-year history on this continent: 245 involving slavery, 100 involving legalized discrimination, and only 30 involving anything else (Wilkins, 1995). Jews and Asians, on the other hand, are populations that immigrated to North America and included doctors, lawyers, professors, and entrepreneurs among their ranks. Moreover, European Jews are able to function as part of the White majority. To expect Blacks to show the same upward mobility as Jews and Asians is to deny the historical and social reality that Black people face.

Myth 7: You can't cure discrimination with discrimination.
The problem with this myth is that it uses the same word -- discrimination -- to describe two very different things. Job discrimination is grounded in prejudice and exclusion, whereas affirmative action is an effort to overcome prejudicial treatment through inclusion. The most effective way to cure society of exclusionary practices is to make special efforts at inclusion, which is exactly what affirmative action does. The logic of affirmative action is no different than the logic of treating a nutritional deficiency with vitamin supplements. For a healthy person, high doses of vitamin supplements may be unnecessary or even harmful, but for a person whose system is out of balance, supplements are an efficient way to restore the body's balance.

Myth 8: Affirmative action tends to undermine the self-esteem of women and racial minorities.
Although affirmative action may have this effect in some cases (Heilman, Simon, & Repper, 1987; Steele, 1990), interview studies and public opinion surveys suggest that such reactions are rare (Taylor, 1994). For instance, a 1995 Gallup poll asked employed Blacks and employed White women whether they had ever felt others questioned their abilities because of affirmative action (Roper Center for Public Opinion, 1995d). Nearly 90% of respondents said no (which is understandable -- after all, White men, who have traditionally benefited from preferential hiring, do not feel hampered by self-doubt or a loss in self-esteem). Indeed, in many cases affirmative action may actually raise the self-esteem of women and minorities by providing them with employment and opportunities for advancement. There is also evidence that affirmative action policies increase job satisfaction and organizational commitment among beneficiaries (Graves & Powell, 1994).

Myth 9: Affirmative action is nothing more than an attempt at social engineering by liberal Democrats.
In truth, affirmative action programs have spanned nine different presidential administrations -- six Republican and three Democratic. Although the originating document of affirmative action was President Lyndon Johnson's Executive Order 11246, the policy was significantly expanded in 1969 by President Richard Nixon and then Secretary of Labor George Schultz. President George Bush also enthusiastically signed the Civil Rights Act of 1991, which formally endorsed the principle of affirmative action. Thus, affirmative action has traditionally enjoyed the support of Republicans as well as Democrats.

Myth 10: Support for affirmative action means support for preferential selection procedures that favor unqualified candidates over qualified candidates.
Actually, most supporters of affirmative action oppose this type of preferential selection. Preferential selection procedures can be ordered along the following continuum:

Selection among equally qualified candidates. The mildest form of affirmative action selection occurs when a female or minority candidate is chosen from a pool of equally qualified applicants (e.g., students with identical college entrance scores). Survey research suggests that three-quarters of the public does not see this type of affirmative action as discriminatory (Roper Center for Public Opinion, 1995e).

Selection among comparable candidates. A somewhat stronger form occurs when female or minority candidates are roughly comparable to other candidates (e.g., their college entrance scores are lower, but not by a significant amount). The logic here is similar to the logic of selecting among equally qualified candidates; all that is needed is an understanding that, for example, predictions based on an SAT score of 620 are virtually indistinguishable from predictions based on an SAT score of 630.

Selection among unequal candidates. A still stronger form of affirmative action occurs when qualified female or minority candidates are chosen over candidates whose records are better by a substantial amount.

Selection among qualified and unqualified candidates. The strongest form of preferential selection occurs when unqualified female or minority members are chosen over other candidates who are qualified. Although affirmative action is sometimes mistakenly equated with this form of preferential treatment, federal regulations explicitly prohibit affirmative action programs in which unqualified or unneeded employees are hired (Bureau of National Affairs, 1979).
Even though these selection procedures occasionally blend into one another (due in part to the difficulty of comparing incommensurable records), a few general observations can be made. First, of the four different procedures, the selection of women and minority members among equal or roughly comparable candidates has the greatest public support, adheres most closely to popular conceptions of fairness, and reduces the chances that affirmative action beneficiaries will be perceived as unqualified or undeserving (Kravitz & Platania, 1993; Nacoste, 1985; Turner & Pratkanis, 1994). Second, the selection of women and minority members among unequal candidates -- used routinely in college admissions -- has deeply divided the nation (with the strongest opposition coming from White males and conservative voters.) And finally, the selection of unqualified candidates is not permitted under federal affirmative action guidelines and should not be equated with legal forms of affirmative action. By distinguishing among these four different selection procedures, it becomes clear that opposition to stronger selection procedures need not imply opposition to milder ones.

Some writers have criticized affirmative action as a superficial solution that does not address deeper societal problems by redistributing wealth and developing true educational equality. Yet affirmative action was never proposed as a cure-all solution to inequality. Rather, it was intended only to redress discrimination in hiring and academic admissions. In assessing the value of affirmative action, the central question is merely this: In the absence of sweeping societal reforms -- unlikely to take place any time soon -- does affirmative action help counteract the continuing injustice caused by discrimination? The research record suggests, unequivocally, that it does.

References:

Bowen, W. G., & Bok, D. (1998). The shape of the river: Long-term consequences of considering race in college and university admissions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Bowler, M. (1999, December). Women's earnings: An overview. Monthly Labor Review, pp. 13-21.
Bureau of National Affairs. (1979). Uniform guidelines on employee selection procedures. Washington, DC: Author.
Citizens' Commission on Civil Rights. (1984, June). Affirmative action to open the doors of job opportunity. Washington, DC: Author.
Ezorsky, G. (1991). Racism and justice: The case for affirmative action. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Graves, L. M., & Powell, G. N. (1994). Effects of sex-based preferential selection and discrimination on job attitudes. Human Relations, 47, 133-157.
Heilman, M. E., Simon, M. C., & Repper, D. P. (1987). Intentionally favored, unintentionally harmed? Impact of sex-based preferential selection on self-perceptions and self-evaluations. Journal of Applied Psychology, 72, 62-68.
Ivins, M. (1995, February 23). Affirmative action is more than black-and-white issue. Philadelphia Daily News, p. 28.
Kravitz, D. A., & Platania, J. (1993). Attitudes and beliefs about affirmative action: Effects of target and of respondent sex and ethnicity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78, 928-938.
Murell, A. J., & Jones, R. (1996). Assessing affirmative action: Past, present, and future. Journal of Social Issues, 52, 77-92.
Nacoste, R. W. (1985). Selection procedure and responses to affirmative action: The case of favorable treatment. Law and Human Behavior, 9, 225-242.
Newport, F., Ludwig, J., & Kearney, S. (2001, July 10). Black-White relations in the United States. Princeton, NJ: The Gallup Organization.
Reverse discrimination of whites is rare, labor study reports. (1995, March 31). New York Times, p. A23.
Roper Center for Public Opinion. (1995a). Question ID: USYANKP.95007, Q21 [Electronic database]. Available from Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe Web site, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe
Roper Center for Public Opinion. (1995b). Question ID: USYANKP.95007, Q18A [Electronic database]. Available from Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe Web site, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe
Roper Center for Public Opinion. (1995c). Question ID: USAP.927K, Q4 [Electronic database]. Available from Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe Web site, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe
Roper Center for Public Opinion. (1995d). Question ID: USGALLUP.950317, R31 [Electronic database]. Available from Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe Web site, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe
Roper Center for Public Opinion. (1995e). Question ID: USGALLUP.950317, R32 [Electronic database]. Available from Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe Web site, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe
Roper Center for Public Opinion. (1997). Question ID: USCBSNYT.121397, R47 [Electronic database]. Available from Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe Web site, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe
Roper Center for Public Opinion. (2000). Question ID: USGALLUP.00JA13, R16 [Electronic database]. Available from Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe Web site, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe
Roper Center for Public Opinion. (2001a). Question ID: USGALLUP.200127, Q35 [Electronic database]. Available from Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe Web site, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe
Roper Center for Public Opinion. (2001b). Question ID: USGALLUP.200127, Q34 [Electronic database]. Available from Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe Web site, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe
Roper Center for Public Opinion. (2001c). Question ID: USGALLUP.01RACE, R08 [Electronic database]. Available from Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe Web site, http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe
Steele, S. (1990). The content of our character: A new vision of race in America. New York: St. Martin's Press.
Taylor. M. C. (1994). Impact of affirmative action on beneficiary groups: Evidence from the 1990 General Social Survey. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 15, 143-178.
Turner, M. E., & Pratkanis, A. R. (1994). Affirmative action as help: A review of recipient reactions to preferential selection and affirmative action. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 15, 43-69.
U.S. Bureau of the Census. (1984). Statistical abstract of the United States: 1984 (104th ed.). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
U.S. Bureau of the Census. (1994). Statistical abstract of the United States: 2000 (114th ed.). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
U.S. Bureau of the Census. (2000). Statistical abstract of the United States: 2000 (120th ed.). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Wilkins, R. (1995, May). Racism has its privileges: The case for affirmative action. The Nation, pp. 409-410, 412, 414-416.

ADULT CHILDREN OF DIVORCED PARENTS

2009-12-31T16:30:00.000-08:00

Adult Children of Divorce
Children Who Are Over 18 When Parents Separate Are Equally Affected
Apr 28, 2007 Victoria Anisman-Reiner
Adult kids of divorce (known as AKODs or ACODs) may be equally or more harmed by the loss of family stability and by parents' poor boundaries than are younger children.
It is commonly accepted that divorce has a developmental impact, and often a serious one, on teenagers and young children. The effect of their parents’ divorce on children who are already considered adults, though, is often dismissed. Adult children of divorce, or ACODs (AKODs, another common acronym, stands for “adult kids of divorce”), are often expected to be an “adult” and support their parents through the pain of separation and divorce. They may also be drawn into their parents’ arguments in ways that younger children might not be.
Statistics and Facts on Divorce
In the U.S.…
approximately 50% of marriages end in divorce
an estimated 40% of adults aged 18-40 come from broken homes (1)
Studies indicate that the most damaging effect of divorce on children arises early in their adult life. Many children of divorce have trouble finding a mate and creating lasting relationships and marriages themselves. While some of these conclusions are contested, they tend to be taken for granted in the popular lexicon. What has not been studied is the long-term impact of divorce on children who were already over 18 years of age at the time their parents separated.
The following arguments are mostly anecdotal. They depend upon the testimonials of men and women whose parents were divorced when they were in their early to late twenties.
“You’re an adult. This doesn’t affect you.”
On the contrary, the separation of parents affects a child even if that “child” is an adult with a home and family of their own.

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Many adult children of divorce report that, even though they never intended to use it, the fact of their parents’ stable “home” was a touchstone they knew they could always return to if they needed.
Becoming the child of a split household requires a rapid change in a person’s world view and the way they perceive themselves. It can shatter a person's self-image as one of the “lucky ones” with an intact family and parents who were and are happy together, and forces a reevaluation of an adult’s perception of their childhood.
In many cases, the separation of parents is accompanied or closely followed by the introduction of new stepparents and stepsiblings. This can be just as unwelcome to adult children as it would be to teenagers and infants – and not living together can make it harder to get to know the new “family.”
How Divorce is Complicated for ACODs
More even than learning to see their parents (and themselves) in a new light, adult children of divorce can be stressed by the demands placed on them by parents. In the trauma of divorce, parents can overstep the healthy boundaries of their children by treating them as supportive friends.
Leaning on an adult child as a confidant, badmouthing the other parent, using the child to carry messages between their parents, or telling the child, “You’re just like your mother/father!” are ultimately all abuses of the parent-child relationship (2), and can be detrimental to the adult child’s own healing and development. Most parents would never consider treating young children in this manner.
Parents who, after a divorce, begin to date may also confide in their children or depend on them for social advice and help. Many ACODs reporting how dismaying and frustrating this kind of conversation with their parents can be.
Help for Adult Children of Divorce
Counseling and psychotherapy can be helpful for adult children during their parents' divorce. There are also online support/discussion groups and websites created by adult kids of divorce, which can give a voice to the feelings and experiences of AKODs.
Related article: Book Review: A Grief Out of Season for the original research on adult kids of divorce.
Citations:
(1) Jen Abbas, http://www.churchplantingvillage.net/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=iiJTKZPEJpH&b=849683&ct=1722613, accessed April 27, 2007
(2) Gillian Rothchild, http://www.committment.com/rothchild.html, accessed April 28, 2007

ADULT CHILDREN OF ALCOHOLICS

2009-12-31T16:26:00.000-08:00

Adult Children of Alcoholics
World Service Organization, Inc.

The Problem

Many of us found that we had several characteristics in common as a result of being brought up in an alcoholic or other dysfunctional households.

We had come to feel isolated, and uneasy with other people, especially authority figures. To protect ourselves, we became people pleasers, even though we lost our own identities in the process. All the same we would mistake any personal criticism as a threat.

We either became alcoholics ourselves, married them, or both. Failing that, we found other compulsive personalities, such as a workaholic, to fulfill our sick need for abandonment.

We lived life from the standpoint of victims. Having an over developed sense of responsibility, we preferred to be concerned with others rather than ourselves. We got guilt feelings when we trusted ourselves, giving in to others. We became reactors rather than actors, letting others take the initiative.

We were dependent personalities, terrified of abandonment, willing to do almost anything to hold on to a relationship in order not to be abandoned emotionally. We keep choosing insecure relationships because they matched our childhood relationship with alcoholic or dysfunctional parents.

These symptoms of the family disease of alcoholism or other dysfunction made us 'co-victims', those who take on the characteristics of the disease without necessarily ever taking a drink. We learned to keep our feelings down as children and keep them buried as adults. As a result of this conditioning, we often confused love with pity, tending to love those we could rescue.

Even more self-defeating, we became addicted to excitement in all our affairs, preferring constant upset to workable solutions.

This is a description, not an indictment.

ADOPTION

2009-12-31T16:21:00.000-08:00

adoption: an overview

Adoption refers to the act by which an adult formally becomes the guardian of a child and incurs the rights and responsibilities of a parent. At the conclusion of the formal process, a legal relationship between child and guardian will have formed. The legal relationship results in the adoptee becoming the legal heir of the adopter and terminates any legal rights then in existence with the natural parents.

While certain jurisdictions only permit one of the two types of adoptions, other jurisdictions recognize two types of adoptions – open and closed adoptions. An open adoption permits the birth mother to select her child’s adoptive parents. A closed adoption, meanwhile, results in the birth mother relinquishing all rights over the child and allows a state administrative agency to conduct the selection process. Some jurisdictions also permit the parents in an open adoption to maintain their visitation and contact rights.

Most cases in which parental rights are terminated occur because of a consensual forfeiture of those rights by parents. Generally, a parent cannot revoke a consensual forfeiture. The natural parent’s right to have custody of their children has been deemed a fundamental right by the U.S. Supreme Court. See Santosky v. Kramer, 455 U.S. 745 (1982).

Although adoptions have historically fallen within the sphere of state authority, Congress has used its spending power to garner some influence over state adoption programs. Under this program, Congress grants money to the states to carry out their programs if they abide by certain Congressional mandates.

Methods of Adoption
Parents looking to adopt can choose one of two methods– an agency or through independent contact with the biological parents. Both public agencies and private agencies exist for the purpose of facilitating adoptions. States run the public agencies, as a state interest exists in placing parentless children with couples looking to adopt. By the time a public agency becomes involved, the natural parents have already relinquished their rights and therefore lack all control over the process. Public agencies employ a stringent test to determine the suitability of parents looking to adopt. With adoptions through public agencies, adoptive parents do not have the child placed with them until the natural parents have relinquished their rights. Both public and private agencies abide by these practices.

With independent adoptions, the natural parents take on the responsibility for finding suitable adoptive parents. Often, the natural parents will place the child in the prospective adoptive parents’ house for a trial period without the natural parents having relinquished their rights.

Who May Adopt
The U.S. Constitution does not provide a fundamental right to adopt. See Lindley for Lindley v. Sullivan, 889 F.2d 124 (7th Cir. 1989). Unless statutory authority exists, one may not adopt a child by private agreement unless an enabling statute exists. However, under certain circumstances, a court may find a child to have been “equitably adopted,” and grant the child certain rights that an adopted child otherwise would have.

Statutes determine the requirements regarding who may adopt in a given state. Most states have modeled their adoption statutes upon the Uniform Adoption Act. The Uniform Adoption Act provides that any individual may adopt another individual in an effort to create the legal relationship of child and parent, subject to the adopting individual having reached adulthood.

States vary with regard to factors they consider as disqualifying one’s ability to adopt. Some statutes disqualify unmarried or single individuals. The Uniform Adoption Act does not prohibit the unmarried from adopting. Others disqualify those suffering from physical or mental disabilities. Some states have imposed “reputability requirements.” Under a reputability requirement, individuals with criminal histories or employment instability would not qualify as suitable for adoption.

To proceed, an individual cannot petition for adoption unless the court makes an official finding that the individual is “acceptable” as an adoptive parent. Before an adoption becomes official, the court must pass upon an investigatory report submitted by the state agency that the individual qualifies as “acceptably suitable” for becoming an adoptive parent. These investigatory reports are tremendously detailed, including the petitioners’ religious backgrounds, social history, financial status, moral fitness, mental and physical fitness, and criminal background. After weighing the factors, the agency makes a recommendation, which the court can accept or reject, with the court basing its decision on serving the best interests and welfare of the child.

Many states, including Florida, Nebraska, and Oklahoma have restricted gays and lesbians from adopting children. But because adoption does not constitute a fundamental right, court challenges to the constitutionality of these restrictions have not worked thus far. Legislatures have enacted these statutes upon the premise that child rearing by gays and lesbians would not be in the best interests of the child. Other jurisdictions may only consider sexual orientation as one factor when considering if a parent fits the acceptability requirement.

Procedure for Adoption
An individual wishing to adopt must petition the court to grant adoption, presenting evidence that they have satisfied the necessary statutory elements. After an investigation, the state adoption agency presents its report of the petitioners to the court and makes a recommendation.

When the statute requires their consent, due process accords the natural parents an opportunity to be heard by the court on the matter. If the court cannot find the natural parents, the court must take steps reasonably calculated to notify the parents about the termination proceeding. For situations in which the natural parent cannot or does not want to care for the child, the natural parent’s wishes for the child’s placement receive significant weight from the court.

The petitioner bears the burden of proving by a preponderance of the evidence that adoption is in the child’s best interests. An adoptive parent looking to terminate the biological parents’ natural rights must show the action to be in the child’s best interest by “clear and convincing evidence.”

menu of sourcesFederal MaterialU.S. Constitution and Federal Statutes25 U.S.C., Chapter 21 - Indian Child Welfare Act42 U.S.C. § 620 - Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 198042 U.S.C., Chapter 67 - Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment and Adoption Reform ActCRS Annotated Constitution
Federal Agency RegulationsCode of Federal Regulations: 45 C.F.R., Part 1356
Federal Judicial DecisionsU.S. Supreme Court: Recent Decisions on Adoptionliibulletin Oral Argument PreviewsU.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals: Recent Decisions on Adoption
State Material
State StatutesUniform Laws (See LII Locator for Uniform Matrimonial, Family, and Health Laws): Interstate Compact on the Adoption of Children (adopted in all states and the District of Columbia)Uniform Adoption Act (1969 version, adopted in Alaska, Arkansas, Montana, North Dakota, and Ohio, and 1994 version not yet adopted in any state) State Adoption Laws
State Judicial DecisionsN.Y. Court of Appeals:
Adoption CasesCommentary from liibulletin-nyAppellate Decisions from Other States
International Material
Conventions and TreatiesConvention on the Protection of Children and Cooperation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption (29 May 93)
Other References
Key Internet SourcesFederal Agencies: Administration for Children and Families of the U.S. Department of Health and Human ServicesUS State Department (International adoption information and guide to regulations of various countries)Get Legal: AdoptionThe ABA Center on Children and the LawABA Section of Family LawAdoption Policy Resource CenterAdoption NetworkAdoption.comNolo Legal Encyclopedia
Useful Offnet (or Subscription - $) SourcesGood Starting Points in Print: Cahn & Hollinger, Families by Law: An Adoption Reader. New York: New York University Press (2004).
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ACQUAINTANCE RAPE

2009-12-31T16:19:00.000-08:00

Perspectives on Acquaintance Rape
David G. Curtis, Ph.D., B.C.E.T.S.
Clinical Associate, Long Island Psychological Associates, P.C.

I. What is Acquaintance Rape?

Acquaintance rape, which is also referred to as "date rape" and "hidden rape," has been increasingly recognized as a real and relatively common problem within society. Much of the attention that has been focused on this issue has emerged as part of the growing willingness to acknowledge and address issues associated with domestic violence and the rights of women in general in the past three decades. Although the early and mid 1970's saw the emergence of education and mobilization to combat rape, it was not until the early 1980's that acquaintance rape began to assume a more distinct form in the public consciousness. The scholarly research done by psychologist Mary Koss and her colleagues is widely recognized as the primary impetus for raising awareness to a new level.

The publication of Koss' findings in the popular Ms. magazine in 1985 informed millions of the scope and severity of the problem. By debunking the belief that unwanted sexual advances and intercourse were not rape if they occurred with an acquaintance or while on a date, Koss compelled women to reexamine their own experiences. Many women were thus able to reframe what had happened to them as acquaintance rape and became better able to legitimize their perceptions that they were indeed victims of a crime. The results of Koss' research were the basis of the book by Robin Warshaw, first published in 1988, entitled I Never Called it Rape.

For current purposes, the term acquaintance rape will be defined as being subjected to unwanted sexual intercourse, oral sex, anal sex, or other sexual contact through the use of force or threat of force. Unsuccessful attempts are also subsumed within the term "rape." Sexual coercion is defined as unwanted sexual intercourse, or any other sexual contact subsequent to the use of menacing verbal pressure or misuse of authority (Koss, 1988).

II. Legal Perspectives on Acquaintance Rape

The electronic media have developed an infatuation with trial coverage in recent years. Among the trials which have received the most coverage have been those involving acquaintance rape. The Mike Tyson/Desiree Washington and William Kennedy Smith/Patricia Bowman trials garnered wide scale television coverage and delivered the issue of acquaintance rape into living rooms across America. Another recent trial which received national attention involved a group of teenaged boys in New Jersey who sodomized and sexually assaulted a mildly retarded 17-year old female classmate. While the circumstances in this instance differed from the Tyson and Smith cases, the legal definition of consent was again the central issue of the trial. Although the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Clarence Thomas were obviously not a rape trial, the focal point of sexual harassment during the hearings expanded national consciousness regarding the demarcations of sexual transgression. The sexual assault which took place at the Tailhook Association of Navy Pilots annual convention in 1991 was well documented. At the time of this writing, events involving sexual harassment, sexual coercion, and acquaintance rape of female Army recruits at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds and other military training facilities are being investigated.

As these well publicized events indicate, an increased awareness of sexual coercion and acquaintance rape has been accompanied by important legal decisions and changes in legal definitions of rape. Until recently, clear physical resistance was a requirement for a rape conviction in California. A 1990 amendment now defines rape as sexual intercourse "where it is accomplished against a person's will by means of force, violence, duress, menace, or fear of immediate and unlawful bodily injury." The important additions are "menace" and "duress," as they include consideration of verbal threats and implied threat of force (Harris, in Francis, 1996). The definition of "consent" has been expanded to mean "positive cooperation in act or attitude pursuant to an exercise of free will. A person must act freely and voluntarily and have knowledge of the nature of the act or transaction involved." In addition, a prior or current relationship between the victim and the accused is not sufficient to imply consent. Most states also have provisions which prohibit the use of drugs and/or alcohol to incapacitate a victim, rendering the victim unable to deny consent.

Acquaintance rape remains a controversial topic because of lack of agreement upon the definition of consent. In an attempt to clarify this definition, in 1994, Antioch College in Ohio adopted what has become an infamous policy delineating consensual sexual behavior. The primary reason this policy has stirred such an uproar is that the definition of consent is based on continuous verbal communication during intimacy. The person initiating the contact must take responsibility for obtaining the other participant's verbal consent as the level of sexual intimacy increases. This must occur with each new level. The rules also state that "If you have had a particular level of sexual intimacy before with someone, you must still ask each and every time." (The Antioch College Sexual Offense Policy, in Francis, 1996).

This attempt to remove ambiguity from the interpretation of consent was hailed by some as the closest thing yet to an ideal of "communicative sexuality." As is often the case with ground breaking social experimentation, it was ridiculed and lampooned by the majority of those who responded to it. Most criticism centered on reducing the spontaneity of sexual intimacy to what seemed like an artificial contractual agreement.

III. Social Perspectives on Acquaintance Rape

Feminists have traditionally devoted much attention to issues such as pornography, sexual harassment, sexual coercion, and acquaintance rape. The sociological dynamics which influence the politics of sexual equality tend to be complicated. There is no single position taken by feminists on any of the aforementioned issues; there are differing and often conflicting opinions. Views on pornography, for example, are divided between two opposing camps. Libertarian feminists, on one hand, distinguish between erotica (with themes of healthy consensual sexuality) and pornography (material that combines the "graphic sexually explicit" with depictions which are "actively subordinating, treating unequally, as less than human, on the basis of sex." (MacKinnon, in Stan, 1995). Socalled "protectionist" feminists tend not to make such a distinction and view virtually all sexually-oriented material as exploitative and pornographic.

Views on acquaintance rape also appear quite capable of creating opposing camps. Despite the violent nature of acquaintance rape, the belief that many victims are actually willing, consenting participants is held by both men and women alike. "Blaming the victim" seems to be an all too prevalent reaction to acquaintance rape. Prominent authors have espoused this idea in editorial pages, Sunday Magazine sections, and popular journal articles. Some of these authors are women (a few identify themselves as feminists) who appear to justify their ideas by drawing conclusions based on their own personal experiences and anecdotal evidence, not wide-scale, systematic research. They may announce that they too have probably been raped while on a date to illustrate their own inevitable entanglement in the manipulation and exploitation which are part of interpersonal relations. It has also been implied that a natural state of aggression between men and women is normal, and that any woman who would go back to a man's apartment after a date is "an idiot." While there may be a certain degree of cautionary wisdom in the latter part of this statement, such views have been criticized for being overly simplistic and for simply submitting to the problem.

There has been a recent flurry of these literary exchanges on acquaintance rape between women's rights advocates, who have been working to raise public awareness, and a relatively small group of revisionists who perceive that the feminist response to the problem has been alarmist. In 1993, The Morning After: Sex, Fear, and Feminism on Campus by Katie Roiphe was published. Roiphe alleged that acquaintance rape was largely a myth created by feminists and challenged the results of the Koss study. Those who had responded and mobilized to meet the problem of acquaintance rape were called "rape-crisis feminists." This book, including excerpted in many major women's magazines, argued that the magnitude of the acquaintance rape problem was actually very small. Myriad critics were quick to respond to Roiphe and the anecdotal evidence she gave to her claims.

IV. Research Findings

The research of Koss and her colleagues has served as the foundation of many of the investigations on the prevalence, circumstances, and aftermath of acquaintance rape within the past dozen or so years. The results of this research have served to create an identity and awareness of the problem. Equally as important has been the usefulness of this information in creating prevention models. Koss acknowledges that there are some limitations to the research. The most significant drawback is that her subjects were drawn exclusively from college campuses; thus, they were not representative of the population at large. The average age of the subjects was 21.4 years. By no means does this negate the usefulness of the findings, especially since the late teens and early twenties are the peak ages for the prevalence of acquaintance rape. The demographic profile of the 3,187 female and 2,972 male students in the study was similar to the makeup of the overall enrollment in higher education within the United States. Here are some of the most important statistics:

Prevalence

One in four women surveyed was victim of rape or attempted rape.
An additional one in four women surveyed was touched sexually against her will or was victim of sexual coercion.
84 percent of those raped knew their attacker.
57 percent of those rapes happened while on dates.
One in twelve male students surveyed had committed acts that met the legal definitions of rape or attempted rape.
84 percent of those men who committed rape said that what they did was definitely not rape.
Sixteen percent of the male students who committed rape and ten percent of those who attempted a rape took part in episodes involving more than one attacker.
Responses of the Victim

Only 27 percent of those women whose sexual assault met the legal definition of rape thought of themselves as rape victims.
42 percent of the rape victims did not tell anyone about their assaults.
Only five percent of the rape victims reported the crime to the police.
Only five percent of the rape victims sought help at rape-crisis centers.
Whether they had acknowledged their experience as a rape or not, thirty percent of the women identified as rape victims contemplated suicide after the incident.
82 percent of the victims said that the experience had permanently changed them.
V. Myths About Acquaintance Rape

There are a set of beliefs and misunderstandings about acquaintance rape that are held by a large portion of the population. These faulty beliefs serve to shape the way acquaintance rape is dealt with on both personal and societal levels. This set of assumptions often presents serious obstacles for victims as they attempt to cope with their experience and recovery.

Myth

Reality

A woman who gets raped usually deserves it, especially if she has agreed to go to a man's house or park with him. No one deserves to be raped. Being in a man's house or car does not mean that a woman has agreed to have sex with him.
If a woman agrees to allow a man to pay for dinner, drinks, etc., then it means she owes him sex. Sex is not an implied payback for dinner or other expense no matter how much money has been spent.
Acquaintance rape is committed by men who are easy to identify as rapists. Women are often raped by "normal" acquaintances who resemble "regular guys."
Women who don't fight back haven't been raped. Rape occurs when one is forced to have sex against their will, whether they have decided to fight back or not.
Intimate kissing or certain kinds of touching mean that intercourse is inevitable. Everyone's right to say "no" should be honored, regardless of the activity which preceded it.
Once a man reaches a certain point of arousal, sex is inevitable and they can't help forcing themselves upon a woman. Men are capable of exercising restraint in acting upon sexual urges.
Most women lie about acquaintance rape because they have regrets after consensual sex. Acquaintance rape really happens - to people you know, by people you know.
Women who say "No" really mean "Yes." This notion is based on rigid and outdated sexual stereotypes.
Certain behaviors such as drinking or dressing in a sexually appealing way make rape a woman's responsibility. Drinking or dressing in a sexually appealing way are not invitations for sex.

VI. Who are the Victims?

Although it is not possible to make accurate predictions about who will be subjected to acquaintance rape and who won't, there is some evidence that certain beliefs and behaviors may increase the risk of becoming a victim. Women who subscribe to "traditional" views of men occupying a position of dominance and authority relative to women (who are seen as passive and submissive) may be at increased risk. In a study where the justifiability of rape was rated based on fictional dating scenarios, women with traditional attitudes tended to view the rape as acceptable if the women had initiated the date (Muehlenhard, in Pirog-Good and Stets, 1989). Drinking alcohol or taking drugs appears to be associated with acquaintance rape. Koss (1988) found that at least 55 percent of the victims in her study had been drinking or taking drugs just before the attack. Women who are raped within dating relationships or by an acquaintance are seen as "safe" victims because they are unlikely to report the incident to authorities or even view it as rape. Not only did a mere five percent of the women who had been raped in the Koss study report the incident, but 42 percent of them had sex again with their assailants.

The company one keeps may be a factor in predisposing women to an increased risk of sexual assault. An investigation of dating aggression and the features of college peer groups (Gwartney-Gibbs & Stockard, in Pirog-Good and Stets, 1989) supports this idea. The results indicate that those women who characterized the men in their mixed-sex social group as occasionally displaying forceful behavior towards women were significantly more likely themselves to be victims of sexual aggression. Being in familiar surroundings does not provide security. Most acquaintance rapes take place in either the victim's or the assailant's home, apartment, or dormitory.

VII. Who Commits Acquaintance Rape?

Just as with the victim, it is not possible to clearly identify individual men who will be participants in acquaintance rape. As a body of research begins to accumulate, however, there are certain characteristics which increase the risk factors. Acquaintance rape is not typically committed by psychopaths who are deviant from mainstream society. It is often expressed that direct and indirect messages given to boys and young men by our culture about what it means to male (dominant, aggressive, uncompromising) contribute to creating a mindset which is accepting of sexually aggressive behavior. Such messages are constantly sent via television and film when sex is portrayed as a commodity whose attainment is the ultimate male challenge. Notice how such beliefs are found within the vernacular of sex: "I'm going to make it with her," "Tonight's the night I'm going to score," "She's never had anything like this before," "What a piece of meat," "She's afraid to give it up."

Nearly everyone is exposed to this sexually biased current by various media, yet this does not account for individual differences in sexual beliefs and behaviors. Buying into stereotypical attitudes regarding sex roles tends to be associated with justification of intercourse under any circumstances. Other characteristics of the individual seem to facilitate sexual aggression. Research designed to determine traits of sexually aggressive males (Malamuth, in Pirog-Good and Stets, 1989) indicated that high scores on scales measuring dominance as a sexual motive, hostile attitudes towards women, condoning the use of force in sexual relationships, and the amount of prior sexual experience were all significantly related to self-reports of sexually aggressive behavior. Furthermore, the interaction of several of these variables increased the chance that an individual had reported sexually aggressive behavior. The inability to appraise social interactions, as well as prior parental neglect or sexual or physical abuse early in life may also be linked with acquaintance rape (Hall & Hirschman, in Wiehe and Richards, 1995). Finally, taking drugs or alcohol is commonly associated with sexual aggression. Of the men who were identified as having committed acquaintance rape, 75 percent had taken drugs or alcohol just prior to the rape (Koss, 1988).

VIII. The Effects of Acquaintance Rape

The consequences of acquaintance rape are often far-reaching. Once the actual rape has occurred and has been identified as rape by the survivor, she is faced with the decision of whether to disclose to anyone what has happened. In a study of acquaintance rape survivors (Wiehe & Richards, 1995), 97 percent informed at least one close confidant. The percentage of women who informed the police was drastically lower, at 28 percent. A still smaller number (twenty percent) decided to prosecute. Koss (1988) reports that only two percent of acquaintance rape survivors report their experiences to the police. This compared with the 21 percent who reported rape by a stranger to the police. The percentage of survivors reporting the rape is so low for several reasons. Self-blame is a recurring response which prevents disclosure. Even if the act has been conceived as rape by the survivor, there is often an accompanying guilt about not seeing the sexual assault coming before it was too late. This is often directly or indirectly reinforced by the reactions of family or friends in the form of questioning the survivor's decisions to drink during a date or to invite the assailant back to their apartment, provocative behavior, or previous sexual relations. People normally relied upon for support by the survivor are not immune to subtly blaming the victim. Another factor which inhibits reporting is the anticipated response of the authorities. Fear that the victim will again be blamed adds to apprehension about interrogation. The duress of reexperiencing the attack and testifying at a trial, and a low conviction rate for acquaintance rapists, are considerations as well.

The percentage of survivors who seek medical assistance after an attack is comparable to the percentage reporting to police (Wiehe & Richards, 1995). Serious physical consequences often emerge and are usually attended to before the emotional consequences. Seeking medical help can also be a traumatic experience, as many survivors feel like they are being violated all over again during the examination. More often than not, attentive and supportive medical staff can make a difference. Survivors may report being more at ease with a female physician. The presence of a rape-crisis counselor during the examination and the long periods of waiting that are often involved with it can be tremendously helpful. Internal and external injury, pregnancy, and abortion are some of the more common physical aftereffects of acquaintance rape.

Research has indicated that the survivors of acquaintance rape report similar levels of depression, anxiety, complications in subsequent relationships, and difficulty attaining pre-rape levels of sexual satisfaction to what survivors of stranger rape report (Koss & Dinero, 1988). What may make coping more difficult for victims of acquaintance rape is a failure of others to recognize that the emotional impact is just as serious. The degree to which individuals experience these and other emotional consequences varies based on factors such as the amount of emotional support available, prior experiences, and personal coping style. The way that a survivor's emotional harm may translate into overt behavior also depends on individual factors. Some may become very withdrawn and uncommunicative, others may act out sexually and become promiscuous. Those survivors who tend to deal the most effectively with their experiences take an active role in acknowledging the rape, disclosing the incident to appropriate others, finding the right help, and educating themselves about acquaintance rape and prevention strategies.

One of the most serious psychological disorders which can develop as the result of acquaintance rape is Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Rape is just one of many possible causes of PTSD, but it (along with other forms of sexual assault) is the most common cause of PTSD in American women (McFarlane & De Girolamo, in van der Kolk, McFarlane, & Weisaeth, 1996). PTSD as it relates to acquaintance rape is defined as in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-Fourth Edition as "the development of characteristic symptoms following exposure to an extreme traumatic stressor involving direct personal experience of an event that involves actual or threatened death or serious injury, or other threat to one's physical integrity" (DSM-IV, American Psychiatric Association, 1994). A person's immediate response to the event includes intense fear and helplessness. Symptoms which are part of the criteria for PTSD include persistent reexperiencing of the event, persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the event, and persistent symptoms of increased arousal. This pattern of reexperiencing, avoidance, and arousal must be present for at least one month. There must also be an accompanying impairment in social, occupational, or other important realm of functioning (DSM-IV, APA, 1994).

If one takes note of the causes and symptoms of PTSD and compares them to thoughts and emotions which might be evoked by acquaintance rape, it is not difficult to see a direct connection. Intense fear and helplessness are likely to be the core reactions to any sexual assault. Perhaps no other consequence is more devastating and cruel than the fear, mistrust, and doubt triggered by the simple encounters and communication with men which are a part of everyday living. Prior to the assault, the rapist had been indistinguishable from non rapists. After the rape, all men may be seen as potential rapists. For many victims, hypervigilance towards most men becomes permanent. For others, a long and difficult recovery process must be endured before a sense of normalcy returns.

IX. Prevention

The following section has been adapted from I Never Called It Rape, by Robin Warshaw. Prevention is not just the responsibility of the potential victims, that is, of women. Men may try to use acquaintance rape myths and false stereotypes about "what women really want" to rationalize or excuse sexually aggressive behavior. The most widely used defense is to blame the victim. Education and awareness programs, however, can have a positive effect in encouraging men to take increased responsibility for their behavior. Despite this optimistic statement, there will always be some individuals who won't get the message. Although it may be difficult, if not impossible, to detect someone who will commit acquaintance rape, there are some characteristics which can signal trouble. Emotional intimidation in the form of belittling comments, ignoring, sulking, and dictating friends or style of dress may indicate high levels of hostility. Projecting an overt air of superiority or acting as if one knows another much better than the one actually does may also be associated with coercive tendencies. Body posturing such as blocking a doorway or deriving pleasure from physically startling or scaring are forms of physical intimidation. Harboring negative attitudes toward women in general can be detected in the need to speak derisively of previous girlfriends. Extreme jealousy and an inability to handle sexual or emotional frustration without anger may reflect potentially dangerous volatility. Taking offense at not consenting to activities which could limit resistance, such as drinking or going to a private or isolated place, should serve as a warning.

Many of these characteristics are similar to each other and contain themes of hostility and intimidation. Maintaining an awareness of such a profile may facilitate quicker, clearer, and more resolute decision-making in problematic situations. Practical guidelines which may be helpful in decreasing the risk of acquaintance rape are available. Expanded versions, as well as suggestions about what to do if rape occurs, may be found in Intimate Betrayal: Understanding and Responding to the Trauma of Acquaintance Rape (Wiehe & Richards, 1995) and I Never Called It Rape (Warshaw, 1994).

References

American Psychiatric Association, (1994). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (4th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.

Francis, L., Ed. (1996) Date rape: Feminism, philosophy, and the law. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.

Gwartney-Gibbs, P. & Stockard, J. (1989). Courtship aggression and mixed-sex peer groups In M.A. Pirog-Good & J.E. Stets (Eds.)., Violence in dating relationships: Emerging social issues (pp. 185-204). New York, NY: Praeger.

Harris, A.P. (1996). Forcible rape, date rape, and communicative sexuality. In L. Francis (Ed.)., Date rape: Feminism, philosophy, and the law (pp. 51-61). University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.

Koss, M.P. (1988). Hidden rape: Sexual aggression and victimization in the national sample of students in higher education. In M.A. Pirog-Good & J.E. Stets (Eds.)., Violence in dating relationships: Emerging social issues (pp. 145168). New York, NY: Praeger.

Koss, M.P. & Dinero, T.E. (1988). A discriminant analysis of risk factors among a national sample of college women. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 57, 133-147.

Malamuth, N.M. (1989). Predictors of naturalistic sexual aggression. In M.A. Pirog-Good & J.E. Stets (Eds.)., Violence in dating relationships: Emerging social issues (pp. 219- 240). New York, NY: Praeger.

McFarlane, A.C. & DeGirolamo, G. (1996). The nature of traumatic stressors and the epidemiology of posttraumatic reactions. In B.A. van der Kolk, A.C. McFarlane & L. Weisaeth (Eds.)., Traumatic stress: The effects of overwhelming experience on mind, body, and society (pp. 129-154). New York, NY: Guilford.

Muehlenhard, C.L. (1989). Misinterpreted dating behaviors and the risk of date rape. In M.A. Pirog-Good & J.E. Stets (Eds.)., Violence in dating relationships: Emerging social issues (pp. 241-256). New York, NY: Praeger.

Stan, A.M., Ed. (1995). Debating sexual correctness: Pornography, sexual harassment, date rape, and the politics of sexual equality. New York, NY: Delta.

Warshaw, R. (1994). I never called it rape. New York, NY: HarperPerennial.

Wiehe, V.R. & Richards, A.L. (1995). Intimate betrayal: Understanding and responding to the trauma of acquaintance rape. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
David G. Curtis, Ph.D., B.C.E.T.S., is a Clinical and School Psychologist. As a consulting psychologist with Long Island Psychological Associates, P.C. in New York he is involved with the evaluation and treatment of survivors of traumatic events. Dr. Curtis is also a school psychologist in the Merrick School District. He is the author and coordinator of the District's Crisis Response Plan. He is a Board Certified Expert in Traumatic Stress and Diplomate of the American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress, where he also serves on the Scientific Advisory Board. Dr. Curtis has held an Adjunct Professor position at Hofstra University. He has presented at various conferences on topics such as Attention Deficit Disorder and Psychological Inhibitors of Athletic Performance. He is a member of the American Psychological Association, the Association for the Advancement of Behavior Therapy, the Nassau County Psychological Association, and the Suffolk County Psychological Association.

ACID RAIN

2009-12-31T16:16:00.000-08:00

What is Acid Rain and What Causes It?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Acid rain" is a broad term used to describe several ways that acids fall out of the atmosphere. A more precise term is acid deposition, which has two parts: wet and dry.

Wet deposition refers to acidic rain, fog, and snow. As this acidic water flows over and through the ground, it affects a variety of plants and animals. The strength of the effects depend on many factors, including how acidic the water is, the chemistry and buffering capacity of the soils involved, and the types of fish, trees, and other living things that rely on the water.

Dry deposition refers to acidic gases and particles. About half of the acidity in the atmosphere falls back to earth through dry deposition. The wind blows these acidic particles and gases onto buildings, cars, homes, and trees. Dry deposited gases and particles can also be washed from trees and other surfaces by rainstorms. When that happens, the runoff water adds those acids to the acid rain, making the combination more acidic than the falling rain alone.

Prevailing winds blow the compounds that cause both wet and dry acid deposition across state and national borders, and sometimes over hundreds of miles. Scientists discovered, and have confirmed, that sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) are the primary causes of acid rain. In the US, About 2/3 of all SO2 and 1/4 of all NOx comes from electric power generation that relies on burning fossil fuels like coal.

Acid rain occurs when these gases react in the atmosphere with water, oxygen, and other chemicals to form various acidic compounds. Sunlight increases the rate of most of these reactions. The result is a mild solution of sulfuric acid and nitric acid.
How Do We Measure Acid Rain?

Acid rain is measured using a scale called "pH." The lower a substance's pH, the more acidic it is. Pure water has a pH of 7.0. Normal rain is slightly acidic because carbon dioxide dissolves into it, so it has a pH of about 5.5. As of the year 2000, the most acidic rain falling in the US has a pH of about 4.3.

Acid rain's pH, and the chemicals that cause acid rain, are monitored by two networks, both supported by EPA. The National Atmospheric Deposition Program measures wet deposition, and its Web site features maps of rainfall pH (follow the link to the isopleth maps) and other important precipitation chemistry measurements.

The Clean Air Status and Trends Network (CASTNET) measures dry deposition. Its web site features information about the data it collects, the measuring sites, and the kinds of equipment it uses.

Effects of Acid Rain

Acid rain causes acidification of lakes and streams and contributes to damage of trees at high elevations (for example, red spruce trees above 2,000 feet) and many sensitive forest soils. In addition, acid rain accelerates the decay of building materials and paints, including irreplaceable buildings, statues, and sculptures that are part of our nation's cultural heritage. Prior to falling to the earth, SO2 and NOx gases and their particulate matter derivatives, sulfates and nitrates, contribute to visibility degradation and harm public health.

What Society Can Do About Acid Deposition

There are several ways to reduce acid deposition, more properly called acid deposition, ranging from societal changes to individual action.

Understand acid deposition's causes and effects

To understand acid deposition's causes and effects and track changes in the environment, scientists from EPA, state governments, and academic study acidification processes. They collect air and water samples and measure them for various characteristics like pH and chemical composition, and they research the effects of acid deposition on human-made materials such as marble and bronze. Finally, scientists work to understand the effects of sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) - the pollutants that cause acid deposition and fine particles - on human health.

To solve the acid rain problem, people need to understand how acid rain causes damage to the environment. They also need to understand what changes could be made to the air pollution sources that cause the problem. The answers to these questions help leaders make better decisions about how to control air pollution and therefore how to reduce - or even eliminate - acid rain. Since there are many solutions to the acid rain problem, leaders have a choice of which options or combination of options are best. The next section describes some of the steps that can be taken to reduce, or even eliminate, the acid deposition problem.

Clean up smokestacks and exhaust pipes

Almost all of the electricity that powers modern life comes from burning fossil fuels like coal, natural gas, and oil. acid deposition is caused by two pollutants that are released into the atmosphere, or emitted, when these fuels are burned: sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx).

Coal accounts for most US sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions and a large portion of NOx emissions. Sulfur is present in coal as an impurity, and it reacts with air when the coal is burned to form SO2. In contrast, NOx is formed when any fossil fuel is burned.

There are several options for reducing SO2 emissions, including using coal containing less sulfur, washing the coal, and using devices called scrubbers to chemically remove the SO2 from the gases leaving the smokestack. Power plants can also switch fuels; for example burning natural gas creates much less SO2 than burning coal. Certain approaches will also have additional benefits of reducing other pollutants such as mercury and carbon dioxide. Understanding these "co-benefits" has become important in seeking cost-effective air pollution reduction strategies. Finally, power plants can use technologies that don't burn fossil fuels. Each of these options has its own costs and benefits, however; there is no single universal solution.

Similar to scrubbers on power plants, catalytic converters reduce NOx emissions from cars. These devices have been required for over twenty years in the US, and it is important to keep them working properly and tailpipe restrictions have been tightened recently. EPA has also made, and continues to make, changes to gasoline that allows it to burn cleaner.

Use alternative energy sources

There are other sources of electricity besides fossil fuels. They include: nuclear power, hydropower, wind energy, geothermal energy, and solar energy. Of these, nuclear and hydropower are used most widely; wind, solar, and geothermal energy have not yet been harnessed on a large scale in this country.

There are also alternative energies available to power automobiles, including natural gas powered vehicles, battery-powered cars, fuel cells, and combinations of alternative and gasoline powered vehicles.

All sources of energy have environmental costs as well as benefits. Some types of energy are more expensive to produce than others, which means that not all Americans can afford all types of energy. Nuclear power, hydropower, and coal are the cheapest forms today, but changes in technologies and environmental regulations may shift that in the future. All of these factors must be weighed when deciding which energy source to use today and which to invest in for tomorrow.

Restore a damaged environment

Acid deposition penetrates deeply into the fabric of an ecosystem, changing the chemistry of the soil as well as the chemistry of the streams and narrowing, sometimes to nothing, the space where certain plants and animals can survive. Because there are so many changes, it takes many years for ecosystems to recover from acid deposition, even after emissions are reduced and the rain becomes normal again. For example, while the visibility might improve within days, and small or episodic chemical changes in streams improve within months, chronically acidified lakes, streams, forests, and soils can take years to decades or even centuries (in the case of soils) to heal.

However, there are some things that people do to bring back lakes and streams more quickly. Limestone or lime (a naturally-occurring basic compound) can be added to acidic lakes to "cancel out" the acidity. This process, called liming, has been used extensively in Norway and Sweden but is not used very often in the United States. Liming tends to be expensive, has to be done repeatedly to keep the water from returning to its acidic condition, and is considered a short-term remedy in only specific areas rather than an effort to reduce or prevent pollution. Furthermore, it does not solve the broader problems of changes in soil chemistry and forest health in the watershed, and does nothing to address visibility reductions, materials damage, and risk to human health. However, liming does often permit fish to remain in a lake, so it allows the native population to survive in place until emissions reductions reduce the amount of acid deposition in the area.

Look to the future

As emissions from the largest known sources of acid deposition - power plants and automobiles-are reduced, EPA scientists and their colleagues must assess the reductions to make sure they are achieving the results Congress anticipated. If these assessments show that acid deposition is still harming the environment, Congress may begin to consider additional ways to reduce emissions that cause acid deposition. They may consider additional emissions reductions from sources that have already been controlled, or methods to reduce emissions from other sources. They may also invest in energy efficiency and alternative energy. The cutting edge of protecting the environment from acid deposition will continue to develop and implement cost-effective mechanisms to cut emissions and reduce their impact on the environment.

Take action as individuals

It may seem like there is not much that one individual can do to stop acid deposition. However, like many environmental problems, acid deposition is caused by the cumulative actions of millions of individual people. Therefore, each individual can also reduce their contribution to the problem and become part of the solution. One of the first steps is to understand the problem and its solutions.

Individuals can contribute directly by conserving energy, since energy production causes the largest portion of the acid deposition problem. For example, you can:

Turn off lights, computers, and other appliances when you're not using them
Use energy efficient appliances: lighting, air conditioners, heaters, refrigerators, washing machines, etc.
Only use electric appliances when you need them.
Keep your thermostat at 68 F in the winter and 72 F in the summer. You can turn it even lower in the winter and higher in the summer when you are away from home.
Insulate your home as best you can.
Carpool, use public transportation, or better yet, walk or bicycle whenever possible
Buy vehicles with low NOx emissions, and maintain all vehicles well.
Be well-informed.
This document is not necessarily endorsed by the Almanac of Policy Issues. It is being preserved in the Policy Archive for historic reasons.

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ACCULTURATION

2009-12-31T16:12:00.000-08:00

Acculturation: Part 1

When alien culture traits diffuse into a society on a massive scale, acculturation frequently is the result. The culture of the receiving society is significantly changed. However, acculturation does not necessarily result in new, alien culture traits completely replacing old indigenous ones. There often is a syncretism , or an amalgamation of traditional and introduced traits. The new traits may be blended with or worked into the indigenous cultural patterns to make them more acceptable.

The Highland Maya Indians of Guatemala and Chiapas State of Southern Mexico provide an example of religious syncretism. Spanish colonial authorities forced Christianity upon them beginning in the 16th century. However, the Maya defined some of the Christian saints as also being their ancient Indian gods. As a result, their indigenous religious belief system was essentially only added to and modified. The overt religious practices seemed to be Christian to the Spanish authorities but they retained dual meanings for the Maya. Their religion was enriched by the syncretism.

British culture-dominated
Australian city (Perth)

Whether acculturation takes place often depends on the relationship between the culture that is receiving the new traits and the culture of their origin. If one society is militarily dominant in the culture contact and they perceive their own culture as being superior in terms of technology and quality of life, it is not likely that they will be acculturated. This was the case in the contact between the British settlers of Australia and the Aborigines they encountered. Visiting an Australian city today, you see European culture almost exclusively. The English generally did not adopt Aborigine ways. However, some minor traits, such as words for plants, animals, and geographic locations, were accepted by the British. Since they were in control of the contact situation, the British were able to pick and choose the traits that would be incorporated into their culture.

Ancient Roman city

If a society is militarily dominated but still perceives its culture to be superior, it also is not likely to be acculturated to the dominant society's culture. This sort of disdaining rejection of acculturation occurred following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire during the 5th century A.D. The end finally came as a result of repeated invasions by militarily superior Germanic tribes. The Romans did not adopt the language or other cultural patterns of their conquerors. It was just the opposite. The Goths and other Germanic tribes generally adopted Roman Christianity, the outward trappings of the Roman political system, and Latin as the language of learning.

A society that is militarily dominant in a culture contact situation but perceives its culture as being inferior is a likely candidate for acculturation. This was the case with the Mongols of North Central Asia under Genghis Khan after they conquered China in the 13th century A.D. The Mongolian occupiers largely adopted Chinese culture within a generation. They were acculturated by the people who they had defeated in war.

Frenchman

Englishman

Contact between societies that are militarily and technologically equals rarely results in acculturation. This is especially true if both societies believe themselves to be culturally superior to the other. Contemporary France and England are an example. Words, foods, and other relatively superficial cultural traits regularly diffuse back and forth between them (especially in the upper social classes), but there is no massive influx of cultural traits. As a result, the Frenchman (on the left) remains strongly French and the Englishman (on the right) remains proudly English in culture.

Australian Aborigine
in European clothes

In contrast, rapid, psychologically overwhelming acculturation usually occurs in societies that are both militarily dominated and believe themselves to be culturally inferior in terms of technology and quality of life. Many of the indigenous societies of Australia and North America suffered this fate. Not only were they ultimately powerless to prevent the occupation of their lands but they could not effectively control the impact of the alien culture on their own people. The consequence frequently was massive acculturation and the replacement of indigenous cultures with little syncretism with their own traditional cultural patterns. The fact that the Australian Aborigine shown here is wearing European clothes is an indication that his traditional culture is not intact.

Millenarian Movements

When a society is helpless to resist a massive cultural invasion and strong pressure to abandon traditional cultural patterns in favor of alien ones, there is usually considerable psychological stress. There is nearly constant culture shock in response to the new reality and disorientation from the failure of traditional skills and values in dealing with the rapidly changing situation. Under these circumstances, it is common for millenarian movements to occur. These are conscious, organized attempts to revive or perpetuate selected aspects of the indigenous culture or to gain control of the direction and rate of culture change. These movements have also been referred to as messianic , nativistic , and revitalization movements.

Millenarian movements are started and led by prophets who preach a religious-like belief in the coming of a new millennium , or period of great happiness, peace, and prosperity brought about by a new order of things. Some of the best known millenarian movements were the Cargo Cults of New Guinea and neighboring islands of Melanesia . They first appeared in 1931 at Buka in the Solomon Islands. Prophets predicted that a flood would soon engulf all Europeans in the region. This flood would be followed by the arrival of ships laden with European goods. Cult believers were to construct storehouses for the goods and to prepare to repulse colonial police. Because it was predicted that the cargo ships would arrive only after the believers used up their own supplies, they stopped farming.

Women in Papua New Guinea

The 1931 Cargo Cult leaders were arrested and the cult quickly died. However, it cropped up again and again in various forms throughout Melanesia, especially after World War II. Some of the later movements blended Christian theology with indigenous cultural ideas. For instance, the resurrection of dead Melanesians was to coincide with the destruction and enslavement of Europeans. Later Cargo Cults also tended to focus more on controlling the ongoing acculturation rather than stopping it. Believers were promised that they would soon get European material wealth and knowledge without being dominated by their colonial masters.

A North American Indian equivalent of the Cargo Cult was the Ghost Dance Movement of the late 19th century. It began in Northwestern Nevada with a prophet named Tävibo . He was a partially acculturated Paviotso (Northern Paiute ) Indian who had worked enough as a ranch hand to get a superficial understanding of European American culture. In 1869, he began preaching his ideas about a new order of things that was coming. As a result of visions, he claimed that all non-Indian Americans would be destroyed by a catastrophic earthquake and that the Indians would get all of their wealth and power. Dead Indians would return to the living, food would be plentiful, and all would live peacefully and happily together. These millenarian ideas spread over the Sierra Nevada Mountains to North and Central California in 1870 where they flourished. The Ghost Dance followers were instructed to purify themselves, dance in a certain way, and sing special songs in order to hasten these changes. By 1872, most of the followers lost faith and the movement began to die out. This was followed by even more rapid acculturation in North and Central California.

Oglala Sioux dancing the Ghost Dance
(sketched by James P. Boyd in 1891)

1894 Sioux Reenactment of the
Ghost Dance (length = 24 secs)

Wovoka (Jack Wilson)
(ca. 1856-1932)

A second Ghost Dance Movement began a generation later as a result of prophesies by Wovoka (also known as Jack Wilson). Wovoka may have been a young relative of Tävibo. It was claimed that Wovoka died of a fever and returned to the living after being told by God to renew the Ghost Dance Movement. Beginning in 1889, his preaching excited the Northern Plains Indians. He said that a new messiah was coming and that he would bring the ghosts of the Indian dead to join the living. In preparation, men and women had to purify themselves and give up alcohol and violence. They also had to dance in a large circle appealing to their ancestors for help. If this was done properly, the old Indian ways would be restored and the Plains Indians would be independent and powerful once again. This movement was taken on with great religious fervor in 1890 by the Arapaho , Northern Cheyenne , and Oglala Sioux . All of these peoples were then embittered by being forced to settle on reservations where there was inadequate food supplies. Emboldened by "ghost shirts" with painted symbols that supposedly would protect them from bullets, many left their reservations and renewed hostility with the U.S. Army. This proved to be a tragic decision. They were hunted down and many were killed at Wounded Knee and other skirmishes. The Ghost Dance Movement failed to deliver its promises and was abandoned.

All of these and other millenarian movements around the world have a number of things in common. They typically develop in small, previously isolated societies with low levels of technology. They are largely a response to the psychological stresses resulting from oppressive culture contact situations in which they are pressured to acculturate with little control over the changes. Their old cultural ways no longer seem to work and the new, alien culture is only partly understood. They also usually use supernatural means to carry out their goal. This involves a leap of faith. In doing this, they are acting rationally from their own culture's perspective. However, they are using good logic based on false assumptions.

The goal of millenarian movements is usually one of two things--the elimination or control of the alien people, customs, and values that are threatening the native ones. These movements are deliberate, organized, conscious efforts to construct or reconstruct a satisfying culture. While there is a focus on particular aspects of culture, apparently there is always a perception of the culture as a whole system in the minds of a movement's participants.

Millenarian movements are, in a sense, healthy signs in that they occur only as long as there is enough of the old culture surviving to be viable. These movements are attempts to stem the tide of psychological disorientation by constructing a meaningful culture from what is remembered of the past and what is poorly understood of the alien culture that is dominating them. If acculturation has proceeded to the point that there is little of the old culture left and there is widespread anomie , a millenarian movement is much less likely to occur.

Millenarian movements are not just a phenomena of the past. They still appear from time to time. A recent one called Naparama (literally "irresistible force") developed in Mozambique during the 1980's. This movement was spawned in the chaos and destruction of a prolonged civil war. Mass starvation and cultural disintegration were rampant. Manuel Antonio was the prophet leader of the Naparama "Spirit Army." He was a mysterious man in his 20's who intentionally kept his tribal identity a secret. He attracted followers by saying that he had died of measles and after 6 days had risen from the grave to receive a message from God instructing him to liberate people behind the lines of the Renamo Army faction that opposed the central government forces.

A core Naparama belief was that warriors who were "vaccinated" would be protected from bullets, spears, and knives. "Vaccination" was a rite in which numerous cuts were made on the chest and neck of initiates with a razor blade. Ashes and unidentified herbs were rubbed into the wounds. At the conclusion, initiates were struck hard with the sharp edge of a panga to prove their invulnerability. If the initiate flinched, the "vaccination" procedure was considered to be a failure and was repeated. Twenty or more teenage boys were usually initiated at a time. When at its peak, the Naparama movement reportedly had about 3,000 dedicated followers.

When the Naparama warriors went into battle, each carried a short spear and a red ribbon pinned on their clothing for protection from bullets. Antonio said that this provided magical protection that would work as long as the young men did not give in to fear. During the late 1980's, the Naparama Spirit Army apparently overran at least 24 well armed Renamo rebel strongholds. Reportedly, the Renamo defenders gave up without a fight when confronted by the magic of Naparama. With the end of the Mozambique civil war in the early 1990's, the Naparama Spirit Army seems to have faded away.

Many charismatic leaders have founded millenarian movements in rapidly changing modern industrialized nations as well. While they did not arise in small isolated, technologically limited societies, as was the case with the Cargo Cults and Ghost Dance Movements, they share many of the same characteristics. The followers typically are disillusioned, alienated people who are desperately searching for a more meaningful world view. Recent, examples of these new movements in America include the People's Temple in the 1970's (led by Reverend Jim Jones), the Branch Davidians in the late 1980's and early 1990's (led by David Koresh), and Heaven's Gate in the late 1980's and 1990's (led by Marshall "Do" Applewhite). All three movements failed to achieve their prophesized rewards and came to an abrupt end with murder and mass suicide.
There have been other similar religion focused millenarian movements that have not failed. Examples of these include the Jehovah's Witnesses (founded by Charles Russell in the 1870's), and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (founded by Joseph Smith in the 1830's). Likewise, some indigenous millenarian movements elsewhere in the world have survived by changing and adopting methods that do not require magic and leaps of faith. For example, the Mau-Mau Movement in Kenya during the early 1950's survived, after a bitter but successful war of independence against Britain, by evolving into a national political movement.

ACADEMIC FREEDOM

2009-12-31T16:08:00.000-08:00

http://www.rbs2.com/afree.htm

History of academic freedom
In medieval Europe, universities were self-governing enclaves that were outside the civil law. Some of this isolation survives today in poorly articulated views that universities are somehow immune from law. Perhaps the fact that large universities have their own police department gives some support to the notion of independence. Regardless of whatever myths may circulate in academic communities, the same law applies to colleges and universities in the USA that applies to people in other settings in the USA. See Healy v. James, 408 U.S. 169, 180 (1972)("At the outset we note that state colleges and universities are not enclaves immune from the sweep of the First Amendment.")

The legal concept of academic freedom originated in Germany around 1850, so it is not an ancient concept. The Prussian Constitution of 1850 declared that "science and its teaching shall be free." In Germany, academic freedom is known as Lehrfreiheit – the right of faculty to teach on any subject. There are two related concepts in Germany: (1) Freiheit der Wissenschaft, freedom of scientific research, and (2) Lernfreiheit, the right of students to attend any lectures, and the absence of class roll calls. This kind of academic freedom has never been a major issue in the USA, owing to differences between the two countries:
In Germany, there are no required classes for university students, and just one examination to obtain the Diplom degree.

In the USA, curriculum is rigidly controlled by faculty, and students must attend all of the required classes and a minimum number of "elective" classes, to qualify for a degree. There is typically at least one examination in every class in the USA.

The German constitution of 23 May 1949, Art. 7 explicitly declares that education and all teaching is under the control of the Federal Education Minister. The German constitution of 23 May 1949, Art. 5, cl. 3 explicitly mentions that "Art and science, research and teaching are free."

In the USA, the federal constitution does not mention education; only a few state constitutions (e.g., California and Michigan) mention education.

Americans during the 1800's who desired a doctoral degree typically went to Europe and studied at a university in England, France, or Germany. In 1876, Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore was founded along the design of German universities at Göttingen and Berlin, which emphasized scholarly research by professors. Other universities in the USA were soon founded along the same lines: for example, the University of Chicago in 1890 and the California Institute of Technology in 1891.

During this time, older American institutions of higher education (e.g., Harvard, Princeton) evolved to include the German idea of a university as a place for scholarly research, as well as teaching of undergraduates. In 1915, the newly formed American Association of University Professors issued their first report on academic freedom.

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Two kinds of academic freedom
There are two distinctly different kinds of academic freedom, which should have distinct names:
Individual academic freedom protects an individual professor.

Institutional academic freedom protects universities from interference by government, a right that applies to the community of scholars, not to individual faculty.

The following people have commented on the problem of using "academic freedom" to mean two different concepts.
Judge Posner, writing for the unanimous panel of three judges in Piarowski v. Illinois Community College, 759 F.2d 625, 629 (1985), cert. denied, 474 U.S. 1007.
Prof. Walter P. Metzger, 66 Texas Law Review 1265, 1266-67, 1314 (1988).
Prof. J. Peter Byrne, 99 Yale Law Journal 251, 255, 257 (1989).
Individual Academic Freedom
A general expression of individual academic freedom is included in the "1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure" by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). This Statement by the AAUP has no legal effect, but the AAUP publicly censures colleges and universities that they believe have violated academic freedom. However, all major colleges and universities have adopted this Statement, or a variation of this Statement, which is contained in the faculty policy manual of each college or university, and is incorporated by reference in the employment contract between the university and each individual faculty member.

In many cases, individual academic freedom is simply part of academic tradition – the routine way that faculty committees, department chairmen, and deans operate when they make judgments about who to hire, who to promote, who gets tenure, who gets larger salary increases, and who gets their employment terminated.
ASIDE: In my ten years as a professor, the most egregious violations of academic freedom that I saw were committed by department chairmen who had spent all of their previous professional career as an employee of either industry or a government laboratory: these chairmen had neither understanding nor respect for academic freedom, they saw professors as mere employees who they rigidly managed.
Individual academic freedom is a relationship between professors and the university administration.

terse remarks about tenure
I note in passing that the AAUP mixes the concepts of academic freedom and tenure. While this essay is not about tenure, I should briefly explain the legal effect of tenure. When a professor receives tenure, the professor is converted from an "at-will employee" (i.e., an employee whose contract can be easily ended, without the need for the employer to give a reason) to a "for cause" employee whose employment can be ended only for good reason(s) shown at an hearing before a committee of other professors at the same institution, followed by review by the administration. The effect of tenure is to make it very difficult for university administration to end the employment of a tenured professor, thus insulating tenured professors from criticism. The benefits of tenure are contract rights, granted by the university administration.

The AAUP and university policy manuals plainly say concepts of academic freedom apply equally to all professors, both tenured and untenured. Given the probationary status of tenure-track faculty, it is obvious that it is only an ideal that tenure-track professors have the same academic freedom as tenured professors.

While tenure for professors may appear as an extraordinarily good deal, it is essentially the same as permanent employment in the federal civil service or the lifetime tenure of judges in federal courts.

internal university operation
A significant part of individual academic freedom is not a legal concept, but dependent on the internal culture among faculty and management (e.g., Department Chairmen, Deans, the Chancellor, and their administrative staff) at a university. Tersely stated, the management of a university gives minimal supervision to teaching and research by faculty, except when problems occur, or when a faculty member is being evaluated for promotion, tenure, or salary increases. The faculty are trusted to do their job competently and professionally. In return, the creative intellectuals on the faculty flourish in this atmosphere of minimal supervision. Freedom from detailed supervision is not a license to relax. Each professor is responsible for meeting his/her classes (or arranging for a substitute), teaching competently, and producing a substantial series of scholarly publications. In departments of science, engineering, and medicine, professors are also expected to write research proposals that attract external funding for their research, including equipment and supplies, half-time salary support during the academic year and full-time salary support during the summer "vacation", financial support for their graduate students, and overhead that pays for the university's operation (e.g., libraries and maintenance of buildings). Far from being a relaxed environment, it is truly a sink or swim environment.

Faculty choose their own textbooks. The syllabus for required courses is set by a departmental curriculum committee, composed only of professors. It is considered highly inappropriate for a professor or administrator to tell a faculty member what grade to assign to a student. The sense of independence is so strong among faculty, that it is often difficult to discuss teaching methods, because no faculty member wants to be accused of criticizing another.

Faculty are active participants in setting all academic rules and regulations, as well as in selecting new faculty members, granting tenure, etc. The use of faculty committees to make the first-level decision means nearly all decisions by university administration have the support of the majority of affected faculty. This is distinct from industrial practice in the USA, where policy is made by managers and major decisions generally come down the chain of command. The university is a community of scholars who value freedom of inquiry and individual choice, not a profit-making corporation that demands adherence to policy made by professional managers.

The academic ideal is that there is tolerance, if not genuine respect, by both the administration and faculty for differences of opinion, methods, style, and personality among the faculty. To some extent, this tolerance of unconventional views and personality is the natural result of an enlightened community: tolerating eccentric personalities of other people means that one's own mannerisms will also be tolerated. Further, professors tend to work as individuals, not in industrial-style teams, so it does not matter if professors are compatible with each other.

As in other areas of life, more management and control means less freedom. It is the same in the university. Surprisingly, scholarly articles on "academic freedom" rarely mention freedom from management as an important feature of academic freedom.

The U.S. Supreme Court used this collegial working environment to hold that professors at Yeshiva University in New York City were managerial, not employees within the meaning of the National Labor Relations Act, and hence the University was not required to bargain with a labor union that represented the professors. NLRB v. Yeshiva Univ., 582 F.2d 686 (1978), aff'd 444 U.S. 672 (1980). "Budget requests prepared by the senior professor in each subject area receive the 'perfunctory' approval of the Dean '99 percent' of the time and have never been rejected by the central administration." Id. note 3 at 676. "... the faculty at each school effectively determine its curriculum, grading system, admission and matriculation standards, academic calendars, and course schedules." Id. at 676, see also at 686. The Court noted that professors "make recommendations to the Dean or Director in every case of faculty hiring, tenure, sabbaticals, termination and promotion." "One Dean estimated that 98% of faculty hiring recommendations were ultimately given effect." Id. at 677, see also note 23 at 686. The Court accepted the view that "the faculty is the school". Id. note 4 at 676 and note 10 at 681.

Institutional Academic Freedom
Institutional academic freedom reserves to the university itself selection of faculty and students, as well as issues in curriculum, such as the content of the syllabus in each class. Institutional academic freedom does not protect individual professors with unorthodox views from dismissal by the university administration, although institutional academic freedom does protect professors from dismissal by legislators or politicians.

The clearest definition of institutional academic freedom in the USA appears in a U.S. Supreme Court opinion, where it is said that academic freedom means that the university can "determine for itself on academic grounds:
who may teach
what may be taught
how it shall be taught, and
who may be admitted to study."
Regents of the Univ. of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265, 312 (1978). Quoted with approval in Widmar v. Vincent, 454 U.S. 263, 276 (1981).
This statement first appeared in a concurring opinion, which is not law, by Justice Frankfurter in a 1957 U.S. Supreme Court case, Sweezy v. New Hampshire, 354 U.S. 234, 263 (1957). Amazingly, Justice Frankfurter quoted this definition from a statement of academics in South Africa, which shows that academic freedom was literally a foreign concept to judges in the USA as late as 1957.

In 1957, some professors were ambivalent about legal protection for academic freedom, because these professors trusted neither judges nor politicians to determine (or to review) academic decisions. J. Peter Byrne, "Academic Freedom", 99 Yale Law Journal 251, 291 (1989); Robert K. Carr, "Academic Freedom, the American Association of University Professors, and the United States Supreme Court", 45 AAUP Bulletin 5, 6, 19-20 (1959).

conflict between the two kinds of freedom
As one would expect when there are two independent concepts, they sometimes conflict with each other:
We may assume, however, that public colleges do not have carte blanche to regulate the expression of ideas by faculty members in the parts of the college that are not public forums. We state this as an assumption rather than a conclusion because, though many decisions describe "academic freedom" as an aspect of the freedom of speech that is protected against governmental abridgment by the First Amendment, the term is equivocal. It is used to denote both the freedom of the academy to pursue its ends without interference from the government ... and the freedom of the individual teacher ... to pursue his ends without interference from the academy; and these two freedoms are in conflict, as in this case.
Piarowski v. Illinois Community College, 759 F.2d 625, 629 (1985)[many citations omitted], cert. denied, 474 U.S. 1007.

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Judicial recognition of academic freedom
The first reported judicial opinion in the USA to mention "academic freedom" was a horrible decision of a New York State court. The City College of New York had appointed the distinguished philosopher, Bertrand Russell, to its faculty. A grieved taxpayer filed suit, because of Prof. Russell's allegedly immoral views, and, despite her having no standing to present this case to the court, the court heard her. Even worse, during a hearing on a summary judgment motion by the College, the judge received evidence and, two days later, made a decision on the merits of the case. The judge announced that
It is contended that Bertrand Russell is extraordinary. That makes him the more dangerous. The philosophy of Mr. Russell and his conduct in the past is in direct conflict and in violation of the Penal Law of the State of New York. When we consider how susceptible the human mind is to the ideas and philosophy of teaching professors, it is apparent that the Board of Higher Education either disregarded the probable consequences of their acts or were more concerned with advocating a cause that appeared to them to present a challenge to so-called 'academic freedom' without according suitable consideration of the other aspects of the problem before them. While this court would not interfere with any action of the board in so far as a pure question of 'valid' academic freedom is concerned, it will not tolerate academic freedom being used as a cloak to promote the popularization in the minds of adolescents of acts forbidden by the Penal Law. This appointment affects the public health, safety and morals of the community and it is the duty of the court to act. Academic freedom does not mean academic license. It is the freedom to do good and not to teach evil.
Kay v. Board of Education, 18 N.Y.S.2d 821, 829 (1940).
The judge then revoked the appointment of Prof. Russell to the faculty. Despite the two outrageous errors of civil procedure, as well as the ridiculousness of the reasoning on the merits of the case, the appellate courts denied the Board of Education a hearing. Kay v. Board of Education, 29 N.E.2d 657 (N.Y. 1940).

This case is notable for demonstrating why judges should not interfere with academic decisions. Not surprisingly, this case spawned critical articles in law reviews:
Hamilton, "Trial by Ordeal, New Style," 50 Yale Law Journal 778 (1941); Note, 53 Harvard Law Review 1192 (1940).

The first use of the phrase "academic freedom" in an opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court was only in 1952, and then only in a dissenting opinion by Justice Douglas, which is not law. Douglas anticipated that the Supreme Court would consider academic freedom to arise out of the First Amendment. Adler v. Board of Education, 342 U.S. 485, 508 (1952).

There is a concurring opinion in a U.S. Supreme Court case that demonstrates clearly the kind of hysterical hyperbole that judges in the USA have used about educators:
To regard teachers – in our entire educational system, from the primary grades to the university – as the priests of our democracy is therefore not to indulge in hyperbole. It is the special task of teachers to foster those habits of open-mindedness and critical inquiry which alone make for responsible citizens, who, in turn, make possible an enlightened and effective public opinion. Teachers must fulfill their function by precept and practice, by the very atmosphere which they generate; they must be exemplars of open-mindedness and free inquiry. They cannot carry out their noble task if the conditions for the practice of a responsible and critical mind are denied to them. They must have the freedom of responsible inquiry, by thought and action, into the meaning of social and economic ideas, into the checkered history of social and economic dogma. They must be free to sift evanescent doctrine, qualified by time and circumstance, from that restless, enduring process of extending the bounds of understanding and wisdom, to assure which the freedoms of thought, of speech, of inquiry, of worship are guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States against infraction by national or State government.
Wieman v. Updegraff, 344 U.S. 183, 196-197 (1952)(Frankfurter, J., concurring).

When I first read this concurring opinion, I made a sarcastic remark that not only are teachers "priests of our democracy", but we respect teachers so highly that we make them, like priests, take a vow of poverty.
ASIDE: It is common to see professors of science or engineering with an annual income only 1/2 to 2/3 of what less qualified scientists or engineers earn as industrial employees. Worse, the equipment in university laboratories is old and generally obsolete, unlike equipment in industrial and government laboratories. Professors of law or medicine are paid an even smaller fraction of what they could earn in private practice. The low salaries of professors may be the result of public perception that professors lead an easy, idyllic life. The reality is that professors at publish-or-perish universities often work 60 hours/week on frustratingly difficult research problems that few people in the world could solve.
Despite what Justice Frankfurter says, his statement is hyperbole.

The first majority opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court to mention academic freedom involved a Marxist journalist (not a professor) who gave one guest lecture at the University of New Hampshire, then was interrogated by the Attorney General of the State of New Hampshire about those lectures, among other topics. Sweezy v. New Hampshire, 354 U.S. 234 (1957). The following words from the majority opinion by Chief Justice Warren are often quoted:
We believe that there unquestionably was an invasion of petitioner's liberties in the areas of academic freedom and political expression – areas in which government should be extremely reticent to tread.

The essentiality of freedom in the community of American universities is almost self-evident. No one should underestimate the vital role in a democracy that is played by those who guide and train our youth. To impose any strait jacket upon the intellectual leaders in our colleges and universities would imperil the future of our Nation. No field of education is so thoroughly comprehended by man that new discoveries cannot yet be made. Particularly is that true in the social sciences, where few, if any, principles are accepted as absolutes. Scholarship cannot flourish in an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust. Teachers and students must always remain free to inquire, to study and to evaluate, to gain new maturity and understanding; otherwise our civilization will stagnate and die.
Sweezy v. New Hampshire, 354 U.S. 234, 250 (1957).

Mere unorthodoxy or dissent from the prevailing mores is not to be condemned. The absence of such voices would be a symptom of grave illness in our society.
Id. at 251.

Sweezy was not a professor, but only a guest lecturer for one day. Wyman v. Sweezy, 121 A.2d 783, 786, 788 (NH 1956). The U.S. Supreme Court completely ignored this fact. This is a critical point, because a professor is hired only after a detailed examination of credentials by a faculty committee, department chairman, and dean, while a guest lecturer is invited by a single professor without any review or approval by the college. Thus Justice Warren's rhetoric is not relevant to the issue before the Court, since Sweezy was not an academic, so this case is not about academic freedom, and any remarks about academic freedom are, at best, only obiter dicta. See the insightful analysis by Prof. Katheryn Katz in her article, "The First Amendment's Protection of Expressive Activity in the University Classroom: A Constitutional Myth," 16 Univ. Calif. Davis Law Review 857, 902-905 (1983).

Nonetheless, eight years after Sweezy, Justice Douglas – writing for the majority in Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 482 (1965) – wrote that Wieman v. Updegraff enunciated the principle of "freedom of inquiry, freedom of thought, and freedom to teach" and that Sweezy and two other cases stood for "the freedom of the entire university community." Douglas' assertion is simply wrong about both Wieman and Sweezy. Wieman was a case about a loyalty oath that all employees of the Oklahoma state government were required to take. The only mention of "freedom of inquiry" in Wieman occurs in an concurring opinion by Justice Frankfurter, which is not law. The phrase "freedom to teach" appears nowhere either in the majority opinion or in the concurring opinions in Wieman. Douglas' incorrect assertions about the holdings in Wieman and Sweezy are not just bad scholarship, but are essentially deceptive. I strongly believe that the Court reached the correct result in the Wieman, Sweezy, and Griswold cases, but law is about more than getting the "right result" in individual cases. Law is also about having a clear expression of a principle or reason for whatever result is obtained. The principle or reason is what guides judges and attorneys in the future as they work with cases that involve slightly different facts from the precedents.

The most quoted legal statement of academic freedom in the USA was written in 1967 by Justice Brennan:
Our Nation is deeply committed to safeguarding academic freedom, which is of transcendent value to all of us and not merely to the teachers concerned. That freedom is therefore a special concern of the First Amendment, which does not tolerate laws that cast a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom.
Keyishian v. Board of Regents, 385 U.S. 589, 603 (1967).
Quoted with approval in Univ. of Pennsylvania v. EEOC, 493 U.S. 182, 197 (1990);
Board of Education v. Pico, 457 U.S. 853, 870 (1982);
Regents of the Univ. of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265, 312 (1978);
Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U.S. 97, 105 (1968).

Prof. Metzger suggests that Brennan's rhetoric compared dismissal of allegedly subversive people from schools and universities in the USA with policies of the Nazi and Soviet governments. Walter P. Metzger, "Profession and Constitution: Two Definitions of Academic Freedom in America", 66 Texas Law Review 1265, 1293 (1988). Hence, phrases like "pall of orthodoxy" are rhetoric, not a statement of law. A Court of Appeals apparently agreed, when it said
Keyishian dealt with that brand of regulation most offensive to a free society: loyalty oaths. The [U.S. Supreme] Court's pronouncements about academic freedom in that context, however, cannot be extrapolated to deny schools command of their own courses.
Bishop v. Aronov, 926 F.2d 1066, 1075 (11thCir. 1991).

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Criticism of legal basis for academic freedom
really about First Amendment
But when the fancy prose is peeled away, most of the so-called "academic freedom" cases are really about either:
the government's suppression of political speech (e.g., publicly criticizing school administration), for example:
Pickering v. Board of Education, 391 U.S. 563 (1968). (Another of my essays discusses the Pickering case in detail.)

the government's interference with freedom of association, (e.g., loyalty oaths, membership in "subversive organizations" such as the Communist Party), for example:
Keyishian v. Board of Regents, 385 U.S. 589, 603 (1967);
Shelton v. Tucker, 364 U.S. 479 (1960);
Sweezy v. New Hampshire, 354 U.S. 234 (1957);
Slochower v. Board of Higher Education, 350 U.S. 551 (1956);
Wieman v. Updegraff, 344 U.S. 183 (1952).

the government's endorsement of religion (e.g., directing that schools teach the Biblical theory of creation), for example:
Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U.S. 578 (1987);
Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U.S. 97 (1968).

In other words, these "academic freedom" cases are about the government's violation of the rights that apply to all people in the USA, rights that are stated in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. For example, see:
If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us.
West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 642 (1943).
Given these rights are protected for everyone in the USA, not just professors, it is not necessary for a judge to invoke the doctrine of academic freedom.

Only a few reported opinions of courts in the USA explicitly recognize that the doctrine of academic freedom is unnecessary. The following cases are noteworthy for their candor:
Hillis v. Austin State Univ., 665 F.2d 547, 553 (5thCir. 1982), cert. denied, 457 U.S. 1106 (1982) ("While academic freedom is well recognized, its perimeters are ill-defined and the case law defining it is inconsistent. Its roots have been found in the first amendment insofar as it protects against infringements on a teacher's freedom concerning classroom content and method.").

Mahoney v. Hankin, 593 F.Supp. 1171, 1174 (S.D.N.Y. 1984) ("Yet, while academic freedom is recognized as a special concern of the first amendment, its parameters are not well-defined, especially with regard to a teacher's speech within the classroom. While the Supreme Court has developed the Pickering balance for a teacher's speech outside the classroom, no such balance or standard has been formulated by the Court for speech inside the classroom. As a result lower courts have applied somewhat varying standards.").

Cohen v. San Bernardino Valley College, 883 F.Supp. 1407, 1412-1413 (C.D. Calif. 1995)("The concept of academic freedom, however, is more clearly established in academic literature than it is in the courts.").

Is the First Amendment a proper basis for Academic Freedom?
Justice Brennan, writing for the majority, said that academic freedom is "a special concern of the First Amendment". Keyishian v. Board of Regents, 385 U.S. 589, 603 (1967). While this bald assertion is the law in the USA, since it comes from the highest court in the USA and has not been overturned, it is not a reasonable statement.

Prof. Katz has argued the U.S. Supreme Court's flamboyant rhetoric about academic freedom being part of freedom of speech is wrong:
... utterances are almost always relevant to a professor's worth. .... These sweeping statements [of the Supreme Court] are not consistent with the whole of the Court's first amendment jurisprudence and are nonsense in an academic setting.
Katheryn Katz, "The First Amendment's Protection of Expressive Activity in the University Classroom: A Constitutional Myth," 16 Univ. Calif. Davis Law Review 857, 926 (1983).

Prof. Byrne has argued that academic freedom is not properly derived from the First Amendment, because First Amendment law developed by the U.S. Supreme Court was intended to apply to political speech, in which the government and courts refuse to consider truth or falsity. As Byrne says, "Such an approach mechanically imports norms from political society into the academic context." However, as Prof. Byrne observes, it is a fundamental part of academic life to criticize professors for the content of their speech: "It is of the essence that worthy ideas be distinguished from dull."
J. Peter Byrne, "Academic Freedom", 99 Yale Law Journal 251, 309-310 (1989).

Consider for a moment what the U.S. Supreme Court means by freedom of speech. A famous passage from a U.S. Supreme Court opinion declares that
We begin with the common ground. Under the First Amendment there is no such thing as a false idea. However pernicious an opinion may seem, we depend for its correction not on the conscience of judges and juries but on the competition of other ideas. ....

The First Amendment requires that we protect some falsehood in order to protect speech that matters.
Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 323, 339-341 (1974);
quoted with approval in Waters v. Churchill, 511 U.S. 661, 672 (1994);
Hustler Magazine v. Falwell, 485 U.S. 46, 51 (1988);
Bose Corp. v. Consumers Union, 466 U.S. 485, 504 (1984);
Old Dominion Branch v. Austin, 418 U.S. 264, 284 (1974).

Does the Supreme Court mean that we must tolerate, in the name of freedom of speech, a professor of geography who claims that the Earth is really flat and is carried through space on the back of a giant beetle?

In mathematics, physics, chemistry, and other sciences it is possible to prove an idea false, by demonstrating a contradiction. It is much more difficult to prove an opinion by a professor of history, philosophy, or music to be false. This difference in subject matter makes it easier to require a fundamental level of orthodoxy among professors of mathematicians and scientists than among professors of humanities and arts. I discuss other aspects of this issue later in this document.

I have posted elsewhere at this web site an essay that discusses the U.S. Supreme Court's metaphor that truth should be determined in the "marketplace of ideas", not by politicians, not by judges, and not by government bureaucrats. However, it is acceptable and proper for university faculty to consider the content of their colleague's statements in making judgments about hiring, promotion, tenure, and dismissal from employment. Scholars are free to say or write whatever they want, but they must also take responsibility for their expression. If scholars make a mistake or do sloppy work, then their reputation will properly suffer.

state action
Finally, the First Amendment only protects speech from regulation by government. If academic freedom is truly derived from the First Amendment, then there is no legal basis for protecting academic freedom at private universities, since a derived right can not have broader applicability than its source. Yet the conventional dogma is that professors at private universities (with the possible exception of universities operated by a religious group) have the same academic freedom as universities that are operated by state or local governments. This contradiction needs a resolution. I suggest that academic freedom is not derived from the First Amendment.

An alternative view is that institutional academic freedom is derived from the First Amendment and that private universities have no need for institutional academic freedom, because private universities are not dependent on government's financial support (except for research contracts from government agencies) and are not under direct governmental control. However, from a historical perspective, it seems clear that institutional academic freedom comes from a doctrine of academic abstention, as is discussed in my separate essay. Further, the First Amendment protects speech of people, not institutions – hence, the First Amendment can only be a possible source of individual academic freedom, not institutional academic freedom.

special privileges in egalitarian democracy
The Dean of the University of Texas Law school said:
... I am deeply troubled by the concept of academic freedom defined in terms of the intellectual autonomy of the professor. In particular, how does the claim to academic freedom rise to the level of a constitutional entitlement under the first amendment to the Constitution?
Mark Yudof, "Three Faces of Academic Freedom," 32 Loyola Law Review 831, 837 (1987).
He then goes on criticize the idea that professors should have greater autonomy than other professions:
... why do not engineers at NASA have the constitutional right to engineer rockets in the most efficient, productive and self-realizing manner – even if their managers and the Congress disagree with them?
Id. at 840.

Given that the USA is an egalitarian democracy, there is no reason to give a higher level of civil liberties for behavior by professors than for the same behavior by ordinary adults. It is an important and fundamental principle in the USA that the same law apply equally to everyone, a principle that suggests that one occupational group (e.g., professors) should not have greater rights than another occupational group. On the other hand, one could argue that journalists are a special class under law (e.g., freedom of press, plus – in some states – a legal privilege that journalists can not be compelled to disclose names of their sources), not because journalists are noble, but only in recognition of the benefit to a democratic society of vigorous investigative journalism. Similarly, one could argue that allowing, even encouraging, professors to experiment with new ideas is beneficial to society. Students have an enriched educational experience when they are exposed to a wide variety of viewpoints and styles by different professors, so academic freedom for professors arguably leads to better education for students. It is certainly true that discoveries by scientists and engineers have resulted in improved technology, and have been responsible for economic growth. In particular, consider the high-tech industry located in the Boston area (in the shadow of MIT, Harvard, Tufts, etc.), Silicon Valley (in the shadow of Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley), and Research Triangle Park in North Carolina (in the shadow of Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill). While it is harder to quantify contributions of professors in the arts and humanities to society, there is no doubt in my mind that such contributions are also important.

Protection against termination of a professor's employment in retaliation for a controversial remark on a political topic can be accomplished in the employment contract between the professor and university, without the need for a legal doctrine of academic freedom.

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No Protection for Wayward Professor
Prof. Katz wrote:
Despite its rhetoric about the glories of academic freedom, the priesthood of teachers, and the value of robust and wide-open debate in the classroom, the [U.S. Supreme] Court has relegated the procedural rights of nonretained academicians to those of the "common herd" of city, state, and federal employees. Their procedural rights upon nonretention stand or fall with those of public employees in particularly, and all who are aggrieved by government action in general. Certainly, the Supreme Court has not recognized any greater or more readily triggered due process rights in faculty members than in government employees in general, even though the safeguarding of first amendment expressive freedoms argues for prophylactic measures.
Katheryn Katz, "The First Amendment's Protection of Expressive Activity in the University Classroom: A Constitutional Myth," 16 Univ. Calif. Davis Law Review 857, 875 (1983). [footnotes omitted]

This essay is not the place to discuss opinions of courts in numerous cases brought by professors who were denied tenure or whose employment contracts were not renewed. However, mention of a few cases will show that, in practice, individual academic freedom is illusory.

In 1970, Dr. Phyllis Hetrick's contract as a tenure-track assistant professor of English at Eastern Kentucky University (EKU) was not renewed. EKU gave as its reasons for nonrenewal of her contract:
... in an attempt to illustrate the "irony" and "connotative qualities" of the English language, she told her freshman students "I am an unwed mother." At the time, she was a divorced mother of two, but she did not reveal that fact to her class.

... she apparently on occasion discussed the war in Vietnam and the military draft with one of her freshman classes. [The district court, in ruling on a motion to dismiss, mentioned that EKU accused her of engaging in draft counseling. Hetrick v. Martin, 322 F.Supp. 545, 546 (E.D.Ky. 1971). The Court of Appeals ignored the issue of such counseling.]

She did not obtain her PhD until late in her second semester, although she agreed that she would do so by the close of the first semester.

She covered only 11 plays in her class, instead of the 20 to 25 plays that the head of the English Department desired. [This complaint is curious, because elsewhere Dr. Hetrick was accused of having academic standards that were too high.]
Hetrick v. Martin, 480 F.2d 705, 706 (6thCir. 1973).

These complaints by the EKU administration were clearly petty.
The Court of Appeals noted that:
The school administration considered the students as generally unsophisticated and as having "somewhat restrictive backgrounds," and for this reason apparently expected the teachers to teach on a basic level, to stress fundamentals and to follow conventional teaching patterns – in a word, to "go by the book." Plaintiff's evidence, on the other hand, tended to show that her teaching emphasized student responsibility and freedom to organize class time and out-of-class assignments in terms of student interest, all in an effort, she claims to teach them how to think rather than merely to accept and to parrot what they had heard.
Id. at 707.

The district court's memorandum opinion said:
... the evidence produced at the hearing leads only to the conclusion that the University's determination not to rehire was based solely upon concern for her pedagogical attitudes. Although the court is inclined to believe that the classroom inadequacies that Dr. Hetrick was alleged to have displayed – inconclusive assignments, extraneous classroom discussions, and insufficient coverage of suggested materials – were largely superficial and thus easily correctable, it is not the duty of the court to evaluate the wisdom of the University's decision not to renew the contract. It simply seems that Dr. Hetrick's teaching methods were too progressive, or perhaps less orthodox than the other faculty members in her department felt were conducive to the achievement of the academic goals they espoused. The court must conclude that a State University has the authority to refuse to renew a non-tenured professor's contract for the reason that the teaching methods of that professor do not conform with those of the tenured faculty or with those approved of by the University.
Id. at 708.

There was no showing that Dr. Hetrick was incompetent, either as an instructor or as a scholar. The Court of Appeals noted that the
district court found that even though the school administration was concerned about the appropriateness of these occurrences, "it does not appear that any of the faculty members felt that Dr. Hetrick had on those particular occasions exceeded the bounds of her teaching prerogative." The student complaints during October and November 1969 allegedly centered on their inability to comprehend what she was attempting to teach them or what was expected of them, although no students were produced at trial to testify that he or she had complained about or was dissatisfied with plaintiff's teaching methods.
Id. at 706.

The Court of Appeals summarized the issue as:
This appeal requires us to decide whether the First Amendment prevents a state university from discharging a teacher whose pedagogical style and philosophy do not conform to the pattern prescribed by the school administration.
Id. at 706.

After a through discussion, the Court of Appeals concluded:
We do not accept plaintiff's assertion that the school administration abridged her First Amendment rights when it refused to rehire her because it considered her teaching philosophy to be incompatible with the pedagogical aims of the University. Whatever may be the ultimate scope of the amorphous "academic freedom" guaranteed to our Nation's teachers and students, [citations omitted] it does not encompass the right of a nontenured teacher to have her teaching style insulated from review by her superiors when they determine whether she has merited tenured status just because her methods and philosophy are considered acceptable somewhere within the teaching profession.
Hetrick v. Martin, 480 F.2d 705, 709 (6thCir. 1973), cert. den., 414 U.S. 1075 (1973).
Justice Douglas – bless his heart – cast the sole vote to grant certiorari.

The Hetrick case is important because it concerns the evaluation of teaching style, something that is part of a professor's personality and individuality. Here, EKU was intolerant of a professor who departed from the bland qualities that the administration apparently desired. Further, there is an issue of standards here. EKU is an accredited university that grants bachelor's degrees. If the syllabus and teaching methods are less challenging at EKU, than at other universities, then a degree from EKU is worth less than a degree from a university with higher academic standards (i.e., a more demanding curriculum). If students at EKU are to be competitive in a national job market, their best interests are served by giving them the same education as at schools in, for example, New York state and Massachusetts. Instead of seeing Dr. Hetrick as the problem, the real problem is that the EKU administration was admitting students who could not do college-level work, then dumbing down the academic program to accommodate those substandard students.

At the conclusion of the case, quoted above, the Court of Appeals characterized Dr. Hetrick's positions as desiring "to have her teaching style insulated from review". But that is not what she was requesting. Her position was that terminating her employment violated her First Amendment rights under "academic freedom" as stated by the U.S. Supreme Court. There was no showing by EKU that Dr. Hetrick was either an ineffective teacher or an incompetent scholar. Dr. Hetrick was fired because her teaching style irritated the administration, who then, in their attempt "to cast a pall of orthodoxy" over EKU, dismissed Dr. Hetrick for reasons having nothing to do with her merit. The Court of Appeals easily dispensed with this troubling case, by mischaracterizing Dr. Hetrick's position as seeking to avoid review, and by ignoring the issue of her alleged draft counseling. Note that notions of academic freedom gave no protection to Dr. Hetrick. Note also that both the District Court and the Court of Appeals treated Dr. Hetrick as a mere at-will employee who could be fired for any reason (except constitutionally impermissible reasons, e.g., discrimination on race, religion, or gender). For someone who believes that university administrators are intelligent and enlightened people, who not only tolerate but also respect individual differences of style and mannerisms, the behavior of EKU was appalling.

Dr. Hetrick's case is not unusual, in fact it is well established law that untenured professors are mere employees with the same legal rights as a waitress in a restaurant or a clerk in a store. The following quotations show that academic freedom offers no legal protection to professors who irritate the university administration.
But we do not conceive academic freedom to be a license for uncontrolled expression at variance with established curricular contents and internally destructive of the proper functioning of the institution.
Clark v. Holmes, 474 F.2d 928, 931 (7thCir. 1972), cert. denied, 411 U.S. 972 (1973).

Academic freedom is not a license for activity at variance with job related procedures and requirements, nor does it encompass activities which are internally destructive to the proper function of the university or disruptive to the education process. .... Academic freedom does not mean freedom from academic responsibility to students, colleagues and the orderly administration of the university.
Stastny v. Central Washington University, 647 P.2d 496, 504 (Wash.Ct.App. 1982), cert. denied, 460 U.S. 1071 (1983).
The strong language quoted above (e.g., "internally destructive") makes it appear that the plaintiff-professors put bombs in campus buildings. In fact, Clark had some disagreements about the content of classes and counselling students; Stastny was absent while presenting a research paper at a seminar in Israel.

Dr. Wirsing was a tenured Professor of Education who believed that teaching and learning can not be evaluated by any standardized approach. As a result of her professional opinion, she refused to distribute student evaluation forms to her students. The University retaliated by refusing to give Dr. Wirsing a merit salary increase, although a faculty evaluation committee had given the highest possible score to Dr. Wirsing's teaching. Dr. Wirsing sued in federal court on grounds of interference with her academic freedom. The district court granted summary judgment to the University because Dr. Wirsing's conduct was not speech. The district court quoted Stastny about academic freedom not encompassing activities that are "internally destructive" or "disruptive of the educational process", then declared:
Further, although Dr. Wirsing may have a constitutionally protected right under the First Amendment to disagree with the University's policies, she has no right to evidence her disagreement by failing to perform the duty imposed upon her as a condition of her employment.
Wirsing v. University of Colorado, 739 F.Supp. 551, 553 (D.Colo. 1990), aff'd without opinion, 945 F.2d 412 (10thCir. 1991), cert. denied, 503 U.S. 906 (1992).

In quoting from these cases, I do not imply that Clark, Stasny, and Wirsing were correct and the university administrations were wrong. I simply want to demonstrate that the doctrine of "academic freedom" offers no legal protection to a wayward professor.

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Academic freedom does not apply to ...
It is important to recognize that students do not have academic freedom, in either Germany or the USA. Students are on campus to learn, not to create new knowledge. Even in the case of graduate students who are doing research for their dissertations, the topic and methods are approved and periodically reviewed by professors, which is a level of supervision that would be inappropriate for a professor's research. Students are not colleagues of professors.

Despite some court opinions in the USA to the contrary, academic freedom does not apply to teachers in elementary and high schools. The following reasons for distinguishing school teachers from university professors can be mentioned:
School teachers teach well-known facts and methods (e.g., reading, writing, arithmetic, history) to their pupils. University professors not only teach cutting-edge knowledge to their advanced students, but also professors are actively involved in the creation of new knowledge and new methods.

School teachers rarely write scholarly works that are published in archival journals or books. University professors are routinely expected to write scholarly works that are published in peer-reviewed archival publications.

School teachers have pupils who are between 5 and 18 years of age, while university professors have students who are at least 18 years of age (i.e., old enough to vote in political elections in the USA). Public policy is abundantly clear that law will provide more protection and governmental regulation for children (i.e., school pupils) than for adults (i.e., university students). Schools inculcate "American values" in pupils, while university students are free to make their own conclusions. Indeed, pupils are required by law to attend school, while it is optional and voluntary for students to attend universities.

School teachers usually have only a bachelor's or master's degree with a major subject of "education". University professors generally have earned a doctoral degree in the subject that they teach and do research.

As a result of the greater regulation of children than adults, and as a result of the differences in academic qualifications of school teachers and university professors:
School teachers use textbooks that are chosen by state educational committees. University professors make their own selection of textbooks for classes that they teach.

School teachers are required to follow a standard syllabus that comes from the administration. In advanced courses, university professors make their own syllabus and determine for themselves the course content, methods, etc. (i.e., individual control and autonomy). In elementary courses, university professors follow a syllabus that is written by a committee of professors in that department at that university (i.e., control by local colleagues, not by remote management).

In short, school teachers can not have academic freedom because such teachers are not academics. Only professors in colleges and universities are properly academics.

The careless word usage by judges (e.g., confusing pupils and students, confusing school teachers and professors, confusing rights of students with academic freedom) shows that judges have not carefully considered the fundamental reasons for either academic freedom or judicial review of educational decisions. One gets the impression that judges carelessly use the phrase "academic freedom" as buzz words, like motherhood, apple pie, and waving the American flag.

Only a few reported court opinions mention the distinction between schools and colleges:
High schools may regulate the length of pupils hair, but colleges may not regulate the length of student's hair. Lansdale v. Tyler Junior College, 470 F.2d 659, 663 (5thCir. 1972), cert. den., 411 U.S. 986 (1973).

A court distinguished Pickering and Tinker, two U.S. Supreme Court cases on freedom of speech in schools, as not obviously applicable to a university environment. Mabey v. Reagan, 537 F.2d 1036, 1046-1048 (9thCir. 1976).

"It could be argued, although we need not decide here, that an educational institution possesses a different pattern of rights and responsibilities and retains more of the traditional custodial responsibilities when its students are all minors, as in an elementary school, or mostly minors, as in a high school." Bradshaw v. Rawlings, 612 F.2d 135, 140 (3dCir. 1979), cert. den., 446 U.S. 909 (1980).

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Legal Barriers
Despite the literal promises of academic freedom for professors in opinions of the U.S. Supreme Court, there are three legal barriers to a professor enforcing his/her academic freedom in a court of law.
In my reading of more than 240 reported cases involving professor v. university or student v. university disputes (excluding laboratory injury cases), the university nearly always wins. This consistent result speaks louder than any doctrine about academic freedom for professors, or rights of people (e.g., professors or students) to fair treatment. This refusal of judges to decide purely academic disputes is called academic abstention. However, judges will hear disputes involving constitutional rights, which is the source of the academic freedom cases that were cited above. I have written a separate essay, Academic Abstention, that quotes from many judicial opinions and law review articles, as well as explains the mysterious origins of the doctrine of academic abstention.

Untenured professors are at-will employees. Under the doctrine of at-will employment, an employer can dismiss an employee for any reason, no reason at all, or even a morally repugnant reason, and courts will not protect the former employee. I have written a separate essay about the history and criticism of at-will employment. At-will employment makes academic freedom a very fragile right for untenured professors.

The rights of government employees (e.g., professors at a state university, teachers in a public school) to freedom of speech have been restricted in a series of U.S. Supreme Court cases since 1977. See my separate essay on freedom of speech.

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Is Academic Freedom Different
in Different Disciplines?
The concept of Truth in science and mathematics is quite different from the concept of Truth in the humanities.

Theorems in mathematics are rigorously proved. There is a uniqueness theorem in differential equations that says there can be only one solution, although there are different ways to find, and to express, that solution. Knowledge in physics and chemistry is susceptible to verification by experiment. A hypothesis that can not be empirically tested is inherently unscientific, although it may be an appropriate hypothesis in another intellectual field, such as philosophy or history.

No competent scientist would seriously suggest that the outcome of an experiment in physical science, or the outcome of a mathematical calculation, would depend on the race, religion, or political views of the observer. However, in other areas (e.g., history, civics so-called "political science", sociology, economics) the concept of Truth can be elusive. Interpretation of historical facts can depend on the race, religion, or political views of the person making the interpretation.

The U.S. Supreme Court hinted at these differences in a case involving a guest lecture by a socialist:
No field of education is so thoroughly comprehended by man that new discoveries cannot yet be made. Particularly is that true in the social sciences, where few, if any, principles are accepted as absolutes.
Sweezy v. New Hampshire, 354 U.S. 234, 250 (1957).
Does this mean that, for example, a civics professor has more academic freedom than a physics professor, just because Truth or correctness is more difficult to establish in the study of government than in the study of physical law? The fact that knowledge is asymptotically approaching some unattainable final state of perfection should not prevent us from saying that some statements are definitely false, because they are contain a contradiction, or because they disagree with experiment.

Here are some examples of where issues in academic freedom could differ from one subject area to another. For example:
Corporate sponsorship of research at universities is generally restricted to departments of science, engineering, and medicine (who can produce results that are "useful" to the corporation), so conflicts between loyalty to sponsors of research and loyalty to Truth are generally restricted to professors in these departments.

Public outrage about an opinion of a professor is much more likely for subjects of social, political, or economic policy than for science, mathematics, or engineering. For example, a psychologist, sociologist, historian, economist, or professor of civics might say something in the course of his/her scholarly work that would upset citizens outside the university. In contrast, can you imagine the public getting upset over a dispute among physicists concerning the mass of an electron?

There are large differences in assessing the quality of a professor's work. In physical science and mathematics, there is a unique correct answer to each question, although there are generally many ways to obtain this correct answer. In liberal arts, there is often no consensus about Truth, Beauty, .... This difference makes evaluations of professors in liberal arts more subjective than evaluations of professors of science or mathematics. There is nothing inherently wrong with subjective evaluations, but they are more difficult to prove correct.

Prohibiting a professor of physics, chemistry, mathematics, or engineering from commenting in the classroom on politics would have no effect on the quality of education in those subjects. However, the same prohibition would seriously inhibit a professor of history, civics, sociology, law, ....

From these differences, we can see why a professor in one department might express academic freedom in different terms than a professor in another department. Most judges have an educational background in history, English literature, or some other discipline in the humanities or in the so-called social sciences, therefore judges would not be expected to see the situation from the perspective of the sciences.

These differences in academic freedom occur naturally in different departments of the university, and are routinely expressed, for example, in the criteria for hiring faculty, and in making tenure, promotion, and salary increase decisions.

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Conclusion
In conclusion, academic freedom in the USA is a matter of internal policy at colleges and universities. Academic freedom in the USA is not a constitutional right belonging to professors. Academic freedom can be a contract right granted to professors by the administration of a college or university, but contract rights are privately negotiated, not imposed by the Constitution.

In saying that academic freedom appears to be an unnecessary concept in law of the USA, I am not expressing my personal opinion of what the law should be, but only what the law really is. In an utopia, a strong case could be made for giving the most intelligent and the most creative individuals adequate resources and freedom. But the USA is not that utopia.
ASIDE: There is a long history of discrimination against, and open contempt of, intellectuals in the USA, as documented in Richard Hofstadter's book Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1963). This disdain for intellectuals even appears in common English-language phrases, such as "it is [only] of academic interest", which means that something is of no practical importance, or the image of a university community as an "ivory tower" that is disconnected from "the real world". In fact, experiments done by scientists and engineers in university laboratories are just as real as those done in industrial laboratories. Phrases like "academic interest" and "ivory tower" are only labels to denigrate and marginalize intellectuals.

What universities and professors really need is not meaningless words about the importance of "academic freedom" from judges, but adequate financial support for professors' salaries, and adequate financial support for scientific equipment and research expenses, libraries, buildings, etc. Academic freedom means nothing if professors can not afford to do the research that they are supposedly free to do.

I have a separate essay that discusses the U.S. Supreme Court decisions on freedom of speech for government employees, which include professors at state universities and teachers in public schools. That essay concludes with a brief discussion of a few cases in which lower courts considered the freedom of speech for professors at state universities, specifically when the professor is critical of the university's administration.

Finally, I have a long essay on wrongful discharge cases under state law in which a learned professional (e.g., attorney, physician, nurse, engineer, or scientist) has his/her employment terminated because the employee chose to follow professional ethics, instead of follow his/her manager's commands. While none of the reported cases involve a professor, such law might be a future possibility for professors to fight an unjust dismissal or failure to renew their contract.

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Short bibliography
There is a large literature on academic freedom, mostly written by professors, and mostly consisting of self-serving praise and unsupported assertions. However, I can recommend the following as containing substantial information and deep intellectual content:
Richard Hofstadter, Academic Freedom in the Age of the College, Columbia University Press (1961).
A history of academic freedom in the USA, from the founding of Harvard College in 1636, up to 1860. Colleges in the USA during this period of time were mostly controlled by churches and devoted to teaching undergraduate students.

Walter P. Metzger, Academic Freedom in the Age of the University, Columbia University Press (1961).
A history of academic freedom in the USA from 1865 to 1917, the time during which ideas of academic freedom were imported from Germany and the time during which the modern university devoted to scholarly research began to appear in the USA. Pages 139 to 193 summarize the dismissal of professors for expressing their political opinions, which dismissals lead to the formation of the American Association of University Professors.

Virginia Davis Nordin, "The Contract to Educate: Toward a More Workable Theory of the Student-University Relationship", 8 J. Coll. & Univ. Law 141 (1981-82).
As the title suggests, this article is concerned with disputes between students and universities, not academic freedom. This article is included in this bibliography not only because it contains an insightful analysis of academic abstention, but also because Nordin was apparently the first person to recognize and articulate the doctrine of academic abstention.

Katheryn Katz, "The First Amendment's Protection of Expressive Activity in the University Classroom: A Constitutional Myth", 16 Univ. Calif. Davis Law Review 857 (1983).

Walter P. Metzger, "Profession and Constitution: Two Definitions of Academic Freedom in America", 66 Texas Law Review 1265 (1988).

Matthew W. Finkin, "Intramural Speech, Academic Freedom, and the First Amendment", 66 Texas Law Review 1323 (1988).

J. Peter Byrne, "Academic Freedom", 99 Yale Law Journal 251, 252-253 (1989).

Walter P. Metzger, "The 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure", 53 Law & Contemporary Problems 3 (1990).

William W. Van Alstyne, "Academic Freedom and the First Amendment ...", 53 Law & Contemporary Problems 79 (1990).
The author is imminently qualified: he is a professor of law at Duke University, an expert on first-amendment law, and a past president and general counsel of the American Association of University Professors. However, his analysis is conventional: he ignores the doctrine of academic abstention.

While normally I would recommend reading opinions of U.S. Supreme Court, those opinions are not particularly helpful in the area of academic freedom. The justices have failed to provide a precise definition of academic freedom. The justices have failed to provide a justification for academic freedom. And, to properly interpret the effusive prose that the justices have written about academic freedom, one must first have a detailed understanding of First Amendment law, which itself is a complex and evolving area of law.

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this document is at http://www.rbs2.com/afree.htm
My most recent search for court cases on this topic was in July 1999.version 3 July 2000, link to academic abstention essay added 1 June 2007.

Domestic abuse: are abused women and battered women the same?

2009-12-31T16:02:00.000-08:00

http://www.violetnet.org/

Domestic abuse: are abused women and battered women the same?

Protect Yourself - Read This First
In this site you will find legal information that may help you if you are experiencing violence in an intimate relationship.

You have three ways to find the information:

If you know exactly what you are looking for, you can browse through Just the Facts and link to the information.

If you are uncertain what information you need, read Mary's (an abused woman) story and link through the bolded words. Each event in Mary's story provides you with some avenues and related information that may be useful if you find yourself in the same situation.

If you are interested in taking on a role and working through different decision points to learn the information, select the It's Your Story and follow through different action mazes.

This is a joint project of the Legal Resource Centre and the Alberta Council of Women's Shelters. Funding was provided by the Status of Women Canada and the Office of Learning Technologies.

About VIOLET / Disclaimer

Go to RoseNet (www.rosenet-ca.org) for information on law and abused immigrant women.

Go to Womens Shelter (www.womensshelter.ca) for resources from the World Conference for Womens Shelters held in Edmonton in September 2008.

Abortion access: All sides of the issue

2009-12-31T15:47:00.000-08:00

http://www.religioustolerance.org/abortion.htm

Abortion access: All sides of the issue
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About abortion access:
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Abortion decision: A woman deciding, after having consulted with her physician and perhaps her spiritual counselor, determines that an abortion is the least-worst option available, and

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This is one of the few places on the Internet where all viewpoints are discussed. We explain the full spectrum of pro-life beliefs and the full diversity of pro-choice beliefs. Because of this, you will probably find some parts of our essays infuriating even as you will affirm the accuracy of other parts.

There is one point over which we dig in our heels and strongly promote a belief. We feel that all women considering an abortion should be fully informed and as free as possible from outside pressure from friends and family members.

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Abortion outside of North America: The "Mexico City" policy
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This, and similar medical information on our web site, is intended as a general educational aid to the public. If the topics covered are of direct concern to you, we recommend that you consult a qualified healthcare professional who can review your unique situation before you reach a decision.

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Do you have a personal story related to abortion that you would like to share with other readers to this web site? Please consider writing it down and E-mailing it to us. We will consider publishing it in this section. We will keep your name absolutely confidential.

Three footnotes:
The following information sources were used to prepare and update the above essay. The hyperlinks are not necessarily still active today.

We use the popular meaning of "life" here to include ova and spermatozoa. Some scientists use a very strict definition of the word "life" which does not include ova and spermatozoa because they cannot, by themselves, reproduce.
An interesting and unbiased article titled "The Abortion Debate" is available on QuickOverview at: http://www.quickoverview.com/
"Pregnancy: Definitions and associated formulas," Division of Biostatistics and Health GIS, Government of South Carolina, at: http://scangis.dhec.sc.gov/

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The FCC Hearings in Seattle – 11/9/2007 -- and Blue Collar Conservatism

2007-11-11T14:49:00.000-08:00

One of the things that many of the Progressive commenters at the recent FCC Hearings in Seattle (concerning media consolidation) was to blame “white men” for these problems. White men were blamed for owning more than they should, and controlling everything in America. In my humble opinion, it’s not white men per-se that they should be targeting in their verbal broadsides. It’s more a certain class of monied people and their corporate henchmen who are the real bad-guys.

I do not believe it is merely a problem of blue-collar white men misperceiving what women, minorities, and even some white men are saying about them. When I bring up this subject to Progressive women and minorities, they have always denied that it is white men in general that they are talking about.

It’s the rich white men, they explain. It’s not the “regular Joe’s” they mean.
As an experiment, I initiated some conversations that evening about the black ex-CEO of Merrill-Lynch, Stanley O’Neal, who was recently ousted for some ethically, challenged activity regarding stock manipulation. “That’s the trouble with black men,” I said. “They get into a position of real power, and immediately they abuse it. They think they can do anything they want in their safe little corporate bubble!” You can imagine the response. Liberals immediately and vociferously let you know that the color of the man is irrelevant. I then brought up the subject of white men always being blamed for problems of corporate corruption of American democracy.

They insist that they are not blaming white men in general – just the rich white men and CEO’s. Black CEO’s, it seems, are still off limits for my criticism. But in their offhand comments they DO say, quite specifically and exclusively: “white men.” I’m a Progressive Liberal, but internally I’m beginning to resist all this casual demonizing of white men. I think it’s losing us elections.

In an Affirmative Action Review of Part 9 of the Federal Procurement Policies and Practices, the review states:
“Throughout the federal government, several programs seek to increase procurement and contracting with minority- and women-owned businesses. The largest of these efforts are government-wide programs overseen by the SBA; this overall effort is supplemented in some cases by agency-specific initiatives. Under these programs taken as a whole, some procurement contracts are set aside for sole-source or sheltered competition contracting, eligibility for which is targeted to minority-owned businesses (and in some cases non-minority women-owned businesses), but by statute available more broadly to "socially and economically disadvantaged" individuals. There is also a broad, race-neutral, sheltered competition or set-aside for small businesses generally. This operates separately and has a lower priority than the more targeted efforts….”

http://womenshistory.about.com/library/etext/gov/bl_gov_aa_09.htm

The above quote highlights what many blue-collar white men (rightfully) believe: That is, that the Federal Government pushes the interests of women and minorities over blue-collar white men. There are any amount of excuses for this state of affairs, but if Progressives want to regain the confidence AND the votes of blue-collar white men, this favoritism must stop.

Do Progressive women and minorities want to win enough to reach out to these voters? How many more losses at the polls will it take for them to see beyond their own prejudice?

2007-09-07T17:54:00.000-07:00

2007-09-07T17:52:00.000-07:00

2007-09-07T17:51:00.000-07:00

2007-09-07T17:50:00.000-07:00

2007-09-07T17:46:00.000-07:00

2007-09-07T17:33:00.000-07:00

2007-09-07T17:32:00.000-07:00

2007-09-06T18:19:00.000-07:00

2007-09-06T18:18:00.000-07:00

Nanticoke Indians of Delaware

2007-09-04T23:16:00.000-07:00

The Last of the Shinnecock Indians

2007-09-04T23:14:00.000-07:00

Shinnecock powow

2007-09-04T23:12:00.000-07:00

Shinnecock musician

2007-09-04T23:09:00.000-07:00

Shinnecock powow 2002

2007-09-04T23:06:00.000-07:00

Modern Shinnecock Woman

2007-09-04T23:04:00.000-07:00

Link to an anthropological history of the Shinnecock Indians

2007-09-04T20:20:00.000-07:00

http://books.google.com/books?id=QqbbFH9dG2YC&dq=+History+of+the+Shinnecock+Indians&pg=PA277&ots=KY_SAvvPUQ&sig=oURQtFgCcgUjau0fn0-mHJS4POU&prev=http://www.google.com/search%3Fhl%3Den%26sa%3DX%26oi%3Dspell%26resnum%3D0%26ct%3Dresult%26cd%3D1%26q%3D%2BHistory%2Bof%2Bthe%2BShinnecock%2BIndians%26spell%3D1&sa=X&oi=print&ct=result&cd=1#PPA226-IA3,M1

Dada humour reference(no Republicans allowed) LINK

2005-03-12T17:54:00.000-08:00

Word to Conservatives: "Everything you Know is Wrong" (link)

2005-03-12T17:37:00.000-08:00

"Yes it is"

Yes it is. Yes it is. Yes it is. Yeah!
Lennon/McCartney

Squeeze the Wheeze.........(link)

2005-03-10T19:23:00.000-08:00

"Go ahead.... Squeeze the wheeze.... People often do...."

Firesign Theater