Civic and Community Engagement Commons^™

Calling All Students? Enrollment In Community-Engaged Learning Courses At A Marianist University, Molly Malany Sayre, Castel V. Sweet, Kelly Bohrer

Research and Reflection on Learning and Teaching in Higher Education

‘Community’ is a pervasive concept at the University of Dayton, a Catholic, Marianist institution in Dayton, Ohio. As such, it was unknown how students who enrolled in community engaged learning (CEL) courses were different from their peers in demographic characteristics, previous experiential learning, and views of community engagement. Findings can inform CEL recruitment as well as evaluation of CEL outcomes, especially at institutions with a similar values orientation. This mixed-methods study indicates that among four semesters of students in three selected CEL courses, few differences were found with students in non-CEL control groups. One significant difference found was in racial …

Patriotism, Pandemic, And Precarity: How The Alt-Right And White Nationalist Movement Used The Pandemic, Arthur J. Jipson

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

This workshop will explore how the so-called Alt-Right and White Nationalist movement used conspiracy theories around the origin and challenge of the COVID-19 Pandemic to recruit members, advance their causes, and create social and cultural discord in an effort to create legitimacy for their racist and white supremacist attacks on community. After a discussion of the current state of the Alt-Right and White Nationalist movement, the workshop will interrogate the various online tools used by these groups to attack and dismantle community and human rights initiatives. The workshop concludes with an interactive activity that helps participants explore how these efforts …

Localizing Human Rights In Response To Global Urban Crises And Right-Wing Populism, Jackie Smith

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Human rights are under increased threat as the world faces economic insecurity, financial volatility, climate change, and the rise of right-wing populist movements. At a time global interdependence demands more intensive cooperation among national governments to address economic and environmental crises, nationalist tendencies are polarizing politics within and among countries.

Although news headlines have focused on the rise of exclusionary and racist movements, there is evidence of significant popular mobilization around more inclusive human rights claims. Because these movements challenge basic elements of the capitalist system, they get less traction in electoral contests and remain marginal to mainstream media and …

Faith-Based Resistance, Human Rights, And Emancipatory Practices, Curtis Kline

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

Progressive political theologies can expand and deepen both the strength and the conceptualization of human rights advocacy. However, not all political theologies are an effort to defend human dignity; neither are all understandings and practices of human rights. The validation of progressive political theologies as well as the validation of human rights conceptualizations comes from their capacity to concretely change the lived reality of poor and oppressed peoples of the world.

As with political theologies, there is a constant struggle over the control of how to conceptualize what constitutes a human rights issue. While many communities of faith find liberating …

Jane Addams On Autonomy And Responsibility, Marilyn Fischer

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Addams understands autonomy and responsibility from the perspective of American pragmatism. Like her collaborator and friend, John Dewey, Addams believes one ascertains an idea's meaning and truth by applying it in practice. Hull House was founded explicitly as a pragmatist test for her ideas on ethics and social change (Lagemann 1994, 77).

Verifying philosophical ideas rests on two methodological prerequisites: concrete experience and sympathetic understanding. Addams repeatedly stresses how emotions serve as the starting point for ethical change, although they need to be cultivated and guided by experience and reason. In addressing social problems, Hull House residents first gathered statistics …