Digital Commons Network^™

Liah Greenfeld On Antisemitism As A Defining Characteristic Of The Monotheistic Civilization, Efraim Karsh

Comparative Civilizations Review

One cannot overstate the scholarly and intellectual loss occasioned by the untimely death of Boston University Professor Liah Greenfeld. Through her prodigious interdisciplinary research, Professor Greenfeld has established herself as one of the foremost social science theorists of our time and a worthy heir to the great firstgeneration nationalism scholars, in particular Eric Hobsbawm, Ernest Gellner, and Anthony Smith.

Was Love Invented In Sixteenth-Century England? A Few Comments On Liah Greenfeld’S Theory Of Emotions, Dmitri Panchenko

Comparative Civilizations Review

According to Liah Greenfeld, there are three kinds of emotions. Primary emotions (such as pain, pleasure, fear, positive and negative excitement, hunger, and satiation) and secondary emotions (such as affection, sorrow, and anger) can be observed in both animals and humans. However, most human emotions ⎯ tertiary emotions ⎯ are more complex. “These, though not unusual among our pets, do not exist in the wild. Tertiary emotions are emotions such as love, ambition, pride, self-respect, shame, guilt, inspiration, enthusiasm, sadness, awe, admiration, humility and humiliation, sense of justice and injustice, envy, malice, resentment, cruelty, hatred; one can go on almost …

Front Matter

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Shifting Faith Among Indigenous People In Arunachal Pradesh, India: Revisiting Greenfeld's Civilizational Framework, M. Amin Khan

Comparative Civilizations Review

This paper examines changing religious demography in Arunachal Pradesh through Liah Greenfeld's theory of civilization as a self-generating and self-reproducing symbolic reality. Using decadal Census data (1971–2011), it traces the demographic decline of Indigenous/Tribal religions classified under “Other Religions and Persuasions” (ORP) alongside the widespread growth of Christianity and the more limited growth of Hinduism. The analysis argues that these demographic shifts reflect more than religious conversion; they reveal differential capacities for cultural reproduction. Whereas civilizations endowed with codified first principles and enduring institutions sustain continuity across generations, Arunachal Pradesh's largely localized and orally transmitted indigenous traditions have proven less …

Professor Greenfeld’S Last Class: Notes For Online Lectures On “The Science Of Humanity,” Delivered To Students And Scholars Primarily From India, July 2025, Liah Greenfeld

Comparative Civilizations Review

The question for this class is: What is humanity?

We all believe we all know what it is, don’t we? After all, there is hardly any subject more important for us, a question on the answer to which other subjects depend — political, social, economic. Answers to questions such as: what are human economic needs and desires; what political structures are optimal for humans; is democracy, for instance, a universal human desire; should politics in every nation be democratic, or, perhaps, authoritarian governments are better; is freedom a natural need, does it make life better, does equality?

Full Issue

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Guest Editor’S Introduction: Liah Greenfeld And The Future Of Comparative Civilizational Studies, Monika Monika, Guest Editor

Comparative Civilizations Review

Every scholarly life leaves behind unfinished questions. Professor Liah Greenfeld was acutely aware of this. Throughout a career spanning more than four decades, her research never settled into the repetition of established arguments. Each major work emerged from the unresolved problems of the previous one, enlarging both the scope of its inquiry and the range of disciplines with which it engaged. Nationalism led her to questions of modernity (Greenfeld, 1992) and the foundations of economic development (Greenfeld, 2001). The growth of the modern economy and the emerging new forces of globalization, in turn, raised broader questions about the self and …

In Memoriam: Liah Greenfeld A Reflection From The President Of The Comparative Civilizations Forum, Bibi Pelić

Comparative Civilizations Review

It is with sorrow and gratitude that the Comparative Civilizations Forum dedicates this special 2026 Fall issue of the Comparative Civilizations Review to the memory of Professor Liah Greenfeld, who passed away in May of this year.

Professor Liah Greenfeld was a sociologist, an anthropologist, a political scientist — and more than any single label can hold. Across four decades at Harvard and then at Boston University, she built a body of work, from Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity to The Spirit of Capitalism to Mind, Modernity, Madness, that stepped outside the boundaries the modern academy likes to draw. …

Liah Greenfeld: Scholar, Thinker, Friend, Joseph Drew

Comparative Civilizations Review

Professor Liah Greenfeld and I met several years ago when she submitted an article to the Comparative Civilizations Review. Her thoughtful demeanor and personal kindness to all were quickly evident, but so, too, was her scholarship, especially her probing theories of state, society, and civilization.

Online Mindfulness Training And Work-Related Outcomes: A Randomized Waitlist Controlled Trial, Conner Lee Deichman

Theses and Dissertations

Mindfulness-based interventions improve employee well-being, yet few studies have examined their impact on work-specific outcomes in private-sector samples. Online mindfulness programs offer a promising, accessible alternative to in-person training. This randomized waitlist-controlled trial evaluated the efficacy of Mindfulness for Humans (MfH), a fully online, self-directed 15-session program, on job satisfaction, burnout, work engagement, subjective well-being, and mindfulness skills among private-sector employees. Participants were randomly assigned to a training-first group or a waitlist-first group and completed measures at baseline, 30 days, and 60 days. Results showed significant improvements in job satisfaction, burnout, subjective well-being, and mindfulness following course participation. The training-first …

Artificial Intelligence And Technology - Joni Full Issue July 2026, Angie Holzer

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

No abstract provided.

Digital Infrastructure Implementation For Nonprofit Sustainability, Yana Kuzina

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

Nonprofit organizations in the United States operate within a constrained regulatory and financial environment that limits their ability to invest in marketing, donor acquisition, and digital infrastructure. Federal funding regulations, particularly under 2 CFR Part 200, restrict the use of grant funds for advertising and public outreach, creating structural barriers to growth and long-term sustainability. This paper presents a scalable methodology for overcoming these constraints through the design and implementation of cost-efficient digital infrastructure systems.

The proposed framework integrates front-end digital acquisition channels with back-end data management and automated communication workflows. It is implemented through a two-stage model: (1) deployment …

Belonging's Influence On Volunteer Motivation In Faith-Based Nonprofit Organizations: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, Adam Stockton

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

Nonprofit organizations often overlook psychological belonging as a driver of volunteer retention and recruitment (Hurt, 2025; Mochin, 2022). The purpose of this qualitative Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) study was to explore how a sense of belonging influenced the intrinsic motivation of nine adults volunteering with a faith-based nonprofit organization in the southern United States. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and analyzed using IPA best practices to identify themes from participants' experiences. The study was grounded in Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, self-determination theory, and organizational identification theory—frameworks that describe how individuals connect personal values and identity to the values and …

Ai-Powered Logistics For Small Nonprofits: A No-Code, Sub-$10 System For Real-Time Distribution Across 41 Locations, Rishi D. Chundury

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

Small nonprofits often struggle to coordinate multi-site distribution campaigns with limited staff, tight budgets, and little access to technology. This article describes how Eye on July Corp., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in Omaha, Nebraska, built an AI-powered system to manage the distribution of 20,000 free safety glasses across 41 community locations for July 4th. The system was built without any coding using three commercially available tools, where Airtable stores the data, Make.com runs the automation, and Anthropic's Claude API provides the intelligence, all at a total cost of under $10. The platform collects stock counts from partner locations, analyzes inventory to …

Building Adaptive Capacity In Community Engaged Nonprofits, Lena Hatchett, Kenneth E. Steinkruger, Laundette P. Jones

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

Nonprofit organizations face ongoing challenges related to uncertain funding, staff burnout, and increasing community needs. This article describes adaptive capacity as a proactive form of resilience that can help nonprofits prepare for unexpected challenges before they occur.  Drawing on examples from a small community-engaged nonprofit, the current article presented activities and tools for strengthening adaptive capacity through both longer-term capacity-building practices and everyday organizational decisions.  We used the McKinsey 7S framework to organize adaptive capacity opportunities across strategy, structure, systems, shared values, skills, style, and staff.  The examples suggest that, despite unanticipated challenges, community-engaged nonprofits may strengthen resilience by adopting …

Summary & Discussion On United Nations Preliminary Report On Ai: Benefits And Harms Of Artificial Intelligence For Civil Society, Angie Holzer

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

In July 2026, the United Nations' newly formed Independent International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence released its first Preliminary Report, offering the first global, scientific assessment of AI's capabilities, risks, and impacts. This article examines the report's findings through the lens of civil society, organizing the Panel's evidence around three questions of direct relevance to nonprofit leaders and researchers: how rapidly AI capability is advancing, who controls its development, and where its benefits and harms are concentrated. Drawing on the Panel's data across societal applications, economic implications, human rights and information integrity, cultural flourishing and child safety, and AI governance, …

Academic Summaries - Artificial Intelligence, Angie Holzer

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

No abstract provided.

Teachers' Perspectives: Literacy Recommendations For Newcomers With Limited Language Proficiency, Rachel Edmunds

Theses and Dissertations

Although multilingual literacy instruction has expanded in recent years, less is known about how teachers can support newcomers with limited language proficiency in Grades 4-6. This gap is significant as many teachers report feeling underprepared to meet the needs of their multilingual learners, especially those with limited language proficiency. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the literacy practices and strategies that teachers found effective when working with students who are multilingual newcomers with limited language proficiency (NLLPs) in Spanish and English in Grades 4-6 along with their implementation experiences. Drawing from Vygotsky's sociocultural theory, this qualitative study …

Dam Negotiations: Water, Diné Sovereignty, And The Navajo Dam, George Smith

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

On July 30, 1958, contractors working for the Bureau of Reclamation broke ground on the Navajo Dam, located about 35 miles east of Farmington, New Mexico. Diné Tribal chairman Paul Jones had called the dam a “new hope for [his] people,” anticipating increased agricultural and industrial capacity from irrigation and flow management. Though officially approved in 1962, the contingent Navajo Indian Irrigation Project (NIIP) that was to provide those many of those benefits remained to be completed in 2024. By contrast, the San Juan Chama Project (SJCP), the other project contingent upon the dam, diverted water from the San Juan …

Christianity Behind The Iron Curtain: How Creative Arts Gave A Voice To The Voiceless, Riana Johnson Wills

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

In 1988, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) held celebrations across the Soviet Union to mark the Millennium of Christianity in Russia, commemorating a thousand years since the baptism of Rus in 988. While this was a monumental day for Christians, many believers across the Soviet Union felt a sense of dissonance. For decades, religious freedom and worship had not been privileges they enjoyed. Thousands of Christians suffered for their belief. The communist regime began in 1922 with Vladimir Lenin. The USSR built upon Marxist ideology where atheism is a fundamental and they expected nationwide compliance to these ideologies. …

Blended Learning Development In Mongolian K-12 Education: A Systematic Review And Psychometric Study Of Teacher Readiness, Batbold Bukhchuluun

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines blended learning (BL) in Asian K-12 education through a systematic review and an empirical validation study in Mongolia. The first study reviews peer-reviewed K-12 BL research published between 2000 and 2024 using PRISMA procedures. We analyzed 42 studies to identify publication trends, geographic representation, BL model adoption, articulation of physical and pedagogical design layers, implementation challenges, and reported outcomes. Findings indicate that BL research is concentrated in a limited number of countries, frequently employs flipped learning models, and often lacks detailed pedagogical specification. Common challenges include infrastructure limitations, teacher preparedness, and institutional support. The second study adapts …

The Role Of Complexity In Structural Transfer: A Corpus Study From Turkish And Bulgarian, Sarah Joy Russell

Theses and Dissertations

This study the explores the need to examine the increasingly varied methods of quantifying morphological complexity in regards to their ability to influence structural borrowing across languages, with particular attention to the distinction between enumerative complexity (enumeration of all of the morphemes and distinctions in a system) and integrative complexity (entropy-based calculation of the class distinctions of the system). While existing models in contact linguistics often assume that structurally simpler languages are more likely to serve as sources of grammatical transfer, such accounts typically rely on enumerative measures of complexity alone and do not fully account for the role of …

Split Alliance And Relationship Satisfaction In Couples Therapy: Examining Split Alliance As A Process Variable, Kyla Yetter

Theses and Dissertations

The present study examined how different patterns of alliance development impact couples' relationship satisfaction, with a particular emphasis on split alliances. The retrospective sample of 1149 couples was taken from the IRB approved Marriage and Family Therapy Practice Research Network. Alliance was measured at each session with the Intersession Alliance Measure- Couples version (IAM-C). The outcome variable, relationship satisfaction, was measured before the first and last sessions of therapy with the Couple Relationship Scale (CRS). Split alliance was operationalized using standard deviation differences in partners' alliance scores, and couples were divided into three groups: 1) Never had a split alliance, …

Respect And Aggression In Intimate Relationships: A Grounded Theory Of Relational Responsiveness, Aaron T. Fife

Theses and Dissertations

The negative effects of aggression in intimate relationships have been well documented through research and clinical literature (Lawrence & Bradbury, 2001; Shortt et al., 2006). Conversely, the positive effects of respectful behavior are well-known (Gottman, 1994; Dew & Wilcox, 2013). This important dimension of relationships is crucial to understanding what makes up healthy and unhealthy relationships. However, little is known about how couples understand the varying types of respect and aggression within intimate relationships, nor how they are lived and experienced relationally. The purpose of this study is to explore the dyadic processes behind respect and aggression as well as …

A Lesson In Class: How Parents' Class Identity Changes Relate To Children's Exposure To Social Classes -- A Latent Profile Analysis, L. Caroline Moore

Theses and Dissertations

Class inequality in the United States has reached levels not seen since the late 1920s. This inequality has been linked to numerous harmful societal outcomes and may be particularly detrimental for children, who often experience limited intergroup contact with individuals from different social class backgrounds. Drawing on Social Identity Theory and the significant role parents play in shaping children's social environments, this study examined how White and Black parents' changes in perceived social class from childhood to adulthood relate to the ways they prioritize exposing their children to different social class environments (N = 702, U.S. sample). Latent Profile Analysis …

Likes, Lies, And Body Esteem: The Moderating Effects Of Age, Concealment, And Gender Between Social Media And Body Esteem For Utah Adolescents, Talise Hirschi

Theses and Dissertations

Social media use has become common among adolescents and contains many messages about one's body such as the thin and muscular ideal. Many parents are learning how to help their adolescent learn how to use social media, and some adolescents may conceal their social media use for various reasons. 588 adolescents (ages 11-18; 77% White; 55% female) from Utah filled out surveys about their social media use and body esteem each school year. In a two-wave cross lag panel model, specific aspects of social media use such as time spent on social media, problematic media use (PMU), and social media …

What Do Highly Successful Families Of Faith Teach Us About Trust?, Caleigh E. B. Kerr

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This study examined trust among diverse families of Abrahamic faiths across the United States. The 292 families who were part of this national study represent significant religious breadth (over 20 total denominations), geographic scope, and racial diversity, with 51% of the participants being racial/ethnic minorities. Married participants had at least one child. Education levels of participants ranged from G.E.D to Ph.D., with varying socioeconomic statuses. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with participants. Couples were hand-chosen by their respective religious leaders as being both relational and religious exemplars.

Using the qualitative responses of participants, a word search was conducted. Responses relevant to …

Differentiation Of Self As A Therapist Effect In Couple Therapy, Nathan D. Knebel

Theses and Dissertations

Murray Bowen proposed that a therapist's level of differentiation of self influences therapeutic effectiveness, particularly in clinically distressed relational systems. Although existing literature has demonstrated that therapist effects account for a meaningful portion of variance in couple therapy outcomes, differentiation of self has received limited empirical attention as a therapist-level predictor. The present article proposes a framework for empirically examining Bowen's hypothesis by investigating whether therapist differentiation predicts trajectories of couple relationship quality across treatment. Additionally, the article explores theoretical pathways through which therapists may increase their level of differentiation, assuming Bowen's hypothesis is supported.

Testing The Moderating Effect Of Self-Compassion On The Relationship Between Perfectionism-Related Discrepancy And Perceived Social Support From Family, Marinne Hammond

Theses and Dissertations

Perfectionism involves an insistence on outstanding performance on tasks to an extreme level. More specifically, perfectionism-related discrepancy is when one subjectively sees a gap between their performance and their expectations for how they should perform. Perfectionism may be linked to mental health issues, such as anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and social disconnection. The perfectionism social disconnection model asserts that perfectionism can also lead to social withdrawal. Self-compassion involves the acceptance of imperfection; it has been associated with higher perceived social support and has also been shown to attenuate the relationship between perfectionism and psychological distress. This study aimed to further …

Unlocking The Colleague Next Door, Yoshihiko Ariizumi

Learning, Teaching, & Researching Optimization

The structural barriers that isolate faculty from one another—individualistic reward systems, professional identity protection, disciplinary silos, fragmented time—have been documented in detail elsewhere. This paper begins where that analysis ends. Its sole focus is solutions: what actually works, what you can do without waiting for your institution to change, and most importantly, what you can do today. It is organized in three movements: evidence-based institutional strategies, community-level structures any group of faculty can build, and a granular map of the smallest possible individual first steps—the ones that cost almost nothing and have an outsized probability of changing how you experience …