Social Justice Commons^™

The Vanguard (Vol. 50, No. 3), Jul-Aug-Sep 2003, Lutheran Human Relations Association

The Vanguard

On August 12, 2003, members and friends of Lutheran Human Relations Association took time from the busy ELCA Churchwide Gathering to celebrate the 50th anniversary of LHRA.

The evening began with a four directional prayer, then music by the ever popular KYROS. The program continued with honored guests Revs. Karl Lutze, Anita Hill, and Joe Ellwanger inspiring the audience with their reflections on the theme "Speak Truth, Do Justice, Build Community." Excerpts from their speeches are featured in this issue.

The Victims: Did The Nazi T–4 Euthanasia Program Discriminate Among Victims In The Targeted Groups?, Nancy Unger

History

Nancy C. Unger and J. Michael Butler take up the question of the targeting of Jews for elimination in the Holocaust. Was this emphasis a special case or part of a broader spectrum of elimination policies designed to rid Germany of all groups designated as undesirable by Nazi ideology— including homosexuals, Gypsies, and the mentally ill?

Unger argues for the specificity of the targeting of the Jewish population for extermination by comparing it to the case of homosexuals. Homosexual men were incarcerated in the death camps, and many were killed in the course of the Holocaust, but, Unger argues, their …

A Fly In The Sugar Of Tradition: An African American Professor's Attempt To Educate Future Police Officers On A Predominantly White College Campus, Michael A. Mcmorris

Different Perspectives on Majority Rules: 7th Annual National Conference (2002)

This presentation explores challenges faced by an African American professor, as he prepares future criminal justice practitioners for careers in a multicultural society. Specifically, curricula issues, academic freedom, internal/external controls and power struggles, relative to teaching in a predominantly White Institution, are discussed. Solution-focused strategies are also presented.

The Picture At Menorah Journal: Making "Jewish Art", Andrea Pappas

Art and Art History

Menorah Journal, founded in 1915 to foster a “Jewish Renaissance,” published essays, poetry, fiction, and political commentary. Along with articles addressing Jewish life and history, it attended to Jewish visual culture, publishing numerous works of art as well as articles by artists and cultural critics. Over the course of the magazine’s existence, only art magazines carried more reproductions of artworks in their pages. Yet when discussing Menorah Journal’s commitment to art, scholars have invariably dealt with it cursorily and as if it was no more than an attractive embellishment to the magazine. Nonetheless, the illustrations appeared, month after month, year …

The Coolest Month, Alisa Solomon

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

If you hung around CLAGS during Spring semester, you ran into a lot of fruitfully provocative contradictions. Take late April, for instance. On the 24th, Marcia Gallo presented her work-in-progress -- a dissertation on the Daughters of Bilitis -- in our Colloquium Series and noted how many of the lesbians who were active in the organization since its founding in 1955 disavowed any serious political aims. "We just wanted to have fun," Gallo reported them saying to her in the extensive interviews she has been doing as part of her research.

"I Went To Learn," Meanings Of The European Tour Of Senator Robert M. La Follette, 1923, Nancy Unger

History

In 1923, progressive Senator Robert M. La Follette, an astute observer of government, economics, and social conditions, toured Europe in preparation for his third-party presidential bid. This article examines that trip and its legacy, particularly in relation to Daniel T. Rodgers' 1998 book Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age.1

When The Local And The Global Are Too Close For Comfort, Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

In the early morning of August 15, 2001, Edgar Garzon, a 35-year-old Latino gay man better know as "Eddie," was viciously attacked with a "blunt instrument" by an unidentified assailant who jumped out of a red car. This occurred in Jackson Heights, Queens, an extremely diverse neighborhood with large concentrations of Latin Americans, Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Koreans and a sizeable gay population. Garzon suffered three fractures in his cranium and was in a coma until September 4, when he passed away at Elmhurst Medical Center. His family, who reside mostly in Colombia and Florida, as well as his close …

Lgbt Studies: Past, Presences And Futures, Richard M. Juang

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

When I rolled out of bed at 4 am on April 20 to make the trip to New York for "Futures of the Field: Building LGBT Studies into the 21st Century University," the idea of discussing institutionalization was less than appealing. In a time of staff cutbacks, increasing courseloads and notoriously poor job markets, going back to sleep seemed a much better idea.

Standing Against Censorship—Again, Alisa Solomon

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Good afternoon. I'm Alisa Solomon, the executive director of the Center for Lesbian and Cay Studies (CLAGS) at the City University of New York, and I'm glad to be here on behalf of CLAGS to voice our strong objection to Mayor Giuliani's so-called Cultural Affairs Advisory Commission. We at CLAGS are not fooled by the Mayor's disingenuous assertions that this committee is merely a group of concerned citizens exercising their free speech in offering him their advice, for we recognize many of the members as long-time activists in the effort to squelch dissident viewpoints and legislate their own narrow morality. …

Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made On, Alisa Solomon

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

I’ve just finished teaching an undergraduate Shakespeare class at Baruch College—CUNY to a class of mostly business majors. For many of the students, English is not their first language, so predictably, they had some trouble parsing Shakespeare's text. But they had no difficulty at all understanding what was going on between Patroclus and Achilles in Troilus and Cressida, or, arguably, between Antonio and Sebastian—or Olivia and Viola or Orsino and Cesario—in Twelfth Night. In general, they were not in the slightest surprised to find homoeroticism in the works of the Greatest Writer Ever. (Indeed, critically analyzing Bardolatry was …

Looking Back, Looking Ahead, Alisa Solomon

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Vivien Ng said something at a roundtable discussion CLAGS hosted in October that has been ringing in my ears ever since. The roundtable had brought together a range of Women's Studies and LGTBQ Studies scholars, writers and teachers, to consider what lessons LGTBQ Studies might draw from its older sister as the younger field becomes further institutionalized at universities and colleges across the country. Was feminism still a motive force? we wondered. Did that field somehow speak to and from a vibrant movement, or at least to and from women's communities? Was it still accountable to them in some way? …

Evolving Tenure Rights And Agricultural Intensification In Southwestern Burkina Faso, Michael Kevane, Leslie C. Gray

Economics

Popular and official representations of the environment in Burkina Faso present soils as fragile and potentially subject to catastrophic collapse in fertility. In the cotton growing zone of southwestern Burkina Faso, researchers and policy makers attribute changes in land cover and land quality to population growth. This paper presents evidence questioning the dominant "population-degradation narrative" as applied to Burkina. We find that farmers are intensifying their production systems. While population has led to land scarcity, farmers are responding to both the resulting uncertainty in land rights and reductions in soil quality by intensifying the production process. Investments are used both …

At The Threshold, Alisa Solomon

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Hunter College professor Joan Tronto was sitting around her office one day, she told us at the Queer CUNY conference on May 6, and a student she'd never met dropped in and sort of just smiled at her. "Hi," the student said. "I saw your name on the flyer for the conference on Saturday," and that was all. The student flashed another moony grin, and then vanished. Over the course of a few days, several other students came by and did the same thing.

Shannon Minter Speaks On Transgender Issues In Queer Theory, Salvador Vidal

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Shannon Minter, a staff attorney for the National Center for Lesbian Rights in San Francisco, presented an enlightening and engaging talk called Piety, Projection, and Denial: The Uses and Misuses of Transgender People in Queer Theory at a well-attended CLAGS colloquium on November 30th. Minter is well known for having transitioned from female to male (FTM) while working for a national LGB rights advocacy organization. In addition to his work on LGB custody, parenting, youth, marriage, and immigration issues at NCLR, he is also a leading advocate for the rights of transgendered people.

Pembinaan Rumah Ibadat Di Pulau Pinang : Satu Kajian Mengenai Insiden Agama Di Kg. Rawa, Pulau Pinang, Mohd. Ali Saripan

Student Works (2000-2009)

Kajian ini berbentuk laporan dan bertujuan untuk mendapatkan punca utama dan punca-punca lain yang menyokong kepada berlakunya insiden yang tidak diingini di negara ini iaitu insiden agama yang melibatkan pergaduhan antara kaum. Sebagai sebuah masyarakat majmuk, Malaysia perlu memelihara perhubungan kaum supaya aman dan harmoni. Insiden yang berlaku melibatkan dua penganut yang besar di Malaysia iaitu Islam dan Hndu. Bagi tujuan tersebut kajian ini melihat kepada faktor-faktor penyumbang utama insiden ini berdasarkan penemuan yang diperolehi di dalam kajian ini. Kajian ini juga melihat hubungkait satu faktor dengan faktor yang lain yang tidak ditangani di peringkat awal memangkinkan dan memberi kesan …

Sex, Money & Power: Women In The Global Economy, St Mary's University

President's Peace Commission - Programs

The President’s Peace Commission existed from 1984 to 2013 at St. Mary's University. The Commission fostered an ethical commitment to participate in the establishment of world peace and social justice.

This program is about women's health issues, emerging global economy and the struggle for peace and justice.

Politics, Pedagogy, And Shaping Public Policy, Jill Dolan

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

We never exactly know when history is going to catch up with us, when we'll be in the midst of a crucial moment to which posterity will refer as key, as significant, as a lynchpin on which other moments, other decisions, other understandings were founded. The impeachment hearings recently conducted in the House of Representatives dragged us all, unwilling and amazed, into a dark hour of American politics, one in which partisan fury and ideological hatred are translated into strategies of power that disregard and reverse electoral politics. There's much to say about the disappointing performance of Bill Clinton as …

The Two Worlds Of Belle La Follette, Nancy Unger

History

Case La Follette, it has been frequently noted, was deemed "my wisest and best counselor" by her husband, Wisconsin progressive great Roberi M. La Follette. She chose to fulfill that counselor's role in remarkable ways throughout their forty-three years of married life, perhaps most significantly by earning a law degree, yet never practicing law herself. This decision was one of many that allowed her to function as her husband's equal in the professional matters that affected him publicly, while reserving for herself a more private and personal role. Belle Case La FoUette's lifetime of decisions reflect her wish to fulfill …

Academics, Advocacy, And Activism, Jill Dolan

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

One of the ways in which CLAGS distinguishes itself from other academically based research centers is through our firm commitment to bridging the academic and activist spheres within the larger lesbian and gay social and political communities. This Spring, we sponsored a roundtable discussion addressing arts censorship that included twenty-five academics and activists concerned about the ways in which the decrease in public arts funding on national and local levels around the country is meant to further disenfranchise lesbians, gay men, and people of color (whether or not they're lesbian or gay).

A Proposed Psychological Assessment Protocol For Applicants To Religious Life In The Roman Catholic Church, Thomas G. Plante, Marcus T. Boccaccini

Psychology

This paper proposes a psychological assessment protocol for applicants to religious life in the Roman Catholic church. While most Catholic religious orders, seminaries, and dioceses require applicants to complete some type of psychological evaluation prior to entrance into seminary, there is no established standard or protocol suggested for conducting these evaluations. The current proposed assessment protocol provides those conducting or receiving these evaluations with a comprehensive foundation from which they can add or delete components to meet their specific needs. Furthermore, the utilization of a standard clergy assessment protocol creates the opportunity for the establishment of a national database useful …

Making Disciples Of All Nations, John C. Hawley

English

The whole problem is this: how to utter God in a practice of faith where I must decide what I wish to do with the woman or man I find in my path-make of him or her a human being with a right to life or a slave for life.-Jean-Marc Ela (139) Perhaps there is such a thing as seduction. Conversion. Perhaps cultures absorb one another. If it is true that the Franciscan padre forced the Eucharist down the Indian's throat, maybe she forgot to close her mouth. Maybe she swallowed the Franciscan priest. After all, the churches of Latin …

Niccolò Machiavelli—Adviser Of Princes, Philip J. Kain

Philosophy

In Plato's Republic, Socrates argued that true artisans work not in their own interest but for the good of that upon which they practice their art. So the true ruler is one who works for the good of the city or the citizens, not the ruler's own self-interest.² Many would hold, with Leo Strauss, that Machiavelli contends the very opposite - that for him the true prince ruthlessly seeks self-interest and personal power.³ I think this is too simple a reading of Machiavelli.

I do not want to argue that Machiavelli is not a Machiavellian - that he …

My Rights Or (Y)Ours: Rights, Responsibilities, And Interdependence, St Mary's University

President's Peace Commission - Programs

The President’s Peace Commission existed from 1984 to 2013 at St. Mary's University. The Commission fostered an ethical commitment to participate in the establishment of world peace and social justice.

This program is about rights, responsibilities and interdependence of society.

We Wretched Of The Earth: The Search For A Language Of Justice, John C. Hawley

English

"In the beginning was the Word," writes John-God's revealing utterance that "was made flesh and lived among us." This incarnational character of the Word, this "living among us," has demanded of Christians in each age a reinterpretation of its original and ongoing meaning. If the protean nature of God's self-expression has seen a continuing "translation" in each age, though, it is becoming increasingly evident among church members that a similar task is also required in each ethnic milieu. The "us" among whom the Word lives is made up of many communities of discourse, and a logocentric theology like Christianity must …

Mongo Beti And Jean Marc Éla: Literary And Christian Liberation In Cameroon, John C. Hawley

English

In his fascinating study of contemporary African intellectuals and their struggle to set themselves apart from their European educations, K wame Anthony Appiah describes the intellectual ferment throughout the continent as producing "new, unpredictable fusions" because Africans "have the great advantage of having before [them] the European and American--and the Asian and Latin American--experiments with modernity to ponder as [they] make [their] choices" (134). Appiah uses the example of his own sister's wedding in Ghana to exemplify the hybridized role that religion continues to play in that self-definition. The ceremony followed the Methodist ritual; a Roman Catholic bishop offered the …

Aristotle, Kant, And The Ethics Of The Young Marx, Philip J. Kain

Philosophy

I would like to argue that the young Marx's ethical views have been influenced not only by Hegel but even more so by Aristotle and Kant. Marx draws away from Hegel's concept of essence toward one more like Aristotle's, and he operates with a concept of universalization similar to that found in Kant's categorical imperative. At the same time, Marx's task is to reconcile these Aristotelian and Kantian elements.

Marx's main concern, however, is not simply to explain what morality is but to explain how it can be realized in the world. For us to understand his views we first …

The Vanguard (Vol. 36 [37], No. 6 [1]), Nov-Dec [Jan-Feb] 1990, Lutheran Human Relations Association Of America

The Vanguard

During the mid-1980s, the Rural Crisis Issue Team of the National Council of churches worked with several Inner-City Church Groups on the loss of land experienced by farmers, especially black farmers, and the changing food system and Rural-Urban Connection Conferences across the country. It was evident by the attendance at those events that urban dwellers were not too concerned that farmers were being forced from the land but some participants registered concern over the quality and price of food stuffs.

Spindrift Gazes, Ronald Charles Kurtenbach

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Spindrift Gazes is a collection of short stories that thematically relate to how human dignity is engendered and how that sense of dignity is challenged, undercut, and regained. These fictional constructions are particularly concerned with issues of transformation, how and why change takes place. Of particular emphasis is how differing kinds of human relationships are instrumental in the nature of those changes. Of fundamental concern is to give fictional form to human rights issues.

Advisor: Judith Slater

Kant's Political Theory And Philosophy Of History, Philip J. Kain

Philosophy

Kant combined two traditional approaches in his political theory, reference to a utopian and ideal universal moral order in common with Plato, Thomas More, and Jean Jacques Rousseau and an analysis of the pursuit of individual self-interest leading to the establishment of laws that enable citizens to satisfy their interests, like Thomas Hobbes, Niccolò Machiavelli, and Adam Smith. Kant focused on the international level, arguing that following the categorical imperative would arrange a society equitably while national commercial self-interest would lead to a league of nations to adjudicate international disputes. Kant was unique in providing both a theory of an …

The Peaceful Resolution Of Norfolk's Integration Crisis Of 1958-1959, Nancy Parker Ford

History Theses & Dissertations

In 1958 Norfolk experienced one of the most serious crises in its long history when six of its public secondary schools were closed by the governor. The closings were a result of Virginia's massive resistance program and forced 10,000 students to seek alternative education for five months or abandon their education entirely. Interviews with major participants in the crisis as well as investigation of newspaper accounts and editorials, personal papers of participants, city and School Board documents, and major works on the period reveal the factors involved in Norfolk's peaceful approach to integration. A comparison with the situation in Little …