bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Māori Studies, Past and Present: A Review
Authors: Reilly Michael P. J.
Published: February 2012

This paper examines the development of Māori studies since it was first taught as an academic subject at Auckland University in 1952. While retaining a strong focus on language learning, Māori studies increasingly includes other culture-based subjects. It espouses theories and methodologies that empower Māori communities and critique Eurocentric scholarship, such as kaupapa Māori. Māori studies is described as mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge), although iwi (tribal-based) wānanga (colleges of learning) argue they are the appropriate repositories. Wānanga, teaching specific iwi knowledge, complement the generalizing Māori studies, which challenges Western universities from within. New Zealand’s universities are developing Treaty of Waitangi–based relationships with Māori communities, and with their own Māori staff and students. However, Māori intellectual practices within Western university disciplines remain contested. Here Māori studies can help support Māori scholarship in the wider institution. Māori studies looks outward to indigenous and Pacific studies, all concerned to rebalance the effects of colonization and explore interdisciplinary spaces. Māori and Pacific studies share a common ancestry and cultural world of language and metaphor. Although frequently separated institutionally, with some Māori studies programs focusing exclusively on Māori, others embrace Pacific studies as equal partners. Māori studies instructs nonindigenous or Pākehā students, but many contest their teaching or research function. Others argue for bicultural research models incorporating Pākehā or nonindigenous researchers and enabling mutually respectful and beneficial relationships in place of a Māori/Pākehā binary opposition, a position acknowledging researchers with shared cultural affiliations.
"Envíos gratis" de remesas a la República Dominicana: una ilusión óptica
Authors: Leal Zulima , Muñiz Humberto García
Published: February 2012

Le marché de transferts d'agent à Porto Rico va grandissant, principalement au niveau des institutions transférant de l'argent vers la République Dominicaine; ceci a permis aux commerçants de créer la vente de «fiches de transferts gratis» aux clients en peso tandis que cette stratégie engendre une marge de profit allant de 7 à 13 dollars US sur chaque transfert de 200 dollars US. Ces types de transferts ne sont que des trompe-l'œil pour motiver les clients à qui le transfert coute plus chère comparativement aux bénéficiaires du billet vert, lequel vaut 3 à 5%. Cette investigation est une analyse détaillée du coût tant explicite qu'implicite des transferts d'argent vers la République Dominicaine.
Autonomy Begins at Home: A Gendered Perspective on Indigenous Autonomy Movements
Authors: Nash June C.
Published: February 2012

Les mayas qui vivent dans les hauteurs de l'ouest de Chiapas du Mexique son entrain de négocier une nouvelle relation avec le gouvernement de cette nation. Cette communauté tente de faire valoir son autonomie principalement dans les régions où elle est majoritaire et s'oppose à toutes formes de paternalisme de développement et de répression au sein de cette même nation qui a essayé d'éradiquer leur culture. Dans cet article j'explore comment le mouvement qui lutte pour son autonomie en se basant sur les normes collectives de la culture maya comme les plus fortes durant la révolution Mexicaine de 1910-1917, ces normes favorisaient aux entrepreneurs à cause de sa biodiversité minérale, aquifère, et génétique. Les stratégies de l'implantation de l'autonomie appliquée dans les différents secteurs de la région des communes indigènes et des organisations paysannes présentent des modèles dont l'objectif est de créer des institutions pour participer dans des actions nationales et globales. Les différences de genre dans toutes ces actions ont une influence sur l'interprétation de l'autonomie selon la tradition de communautés déclarées autonomes. A partir d'une comparaison de ces pratiques venant de différente partie de Chiapas, j'essaie de démontrer dans un cadre général les conséquences de cette influence dans un model comme un alternatif de l'existence pluriculturelle.
La Lucha
Authors: Taylor Samuel
Published: February 2012

There is much more to life in Cuba than free doctors and prison sentences for a handful of dissidents. Karl Marx asserted that human happiness and spiritual well0being are largely determined by one's daily economic activity. Therefore, according to the namesake of Cuba's experiment, understanding the Cuban experience under Castro necessitates an understanding of Cubans' relationship to their daily work and consumption. This essay aims to explore that relationship in and around Havana.
Reclaiming Federalism
Authors: Barron David J.
Published: February 2012

The revival of states' rights may be the most substantial accomplishment of the Rehnquist Court's conservative majority. Cases concerning federalism do not regularly capture the newspaper headlines of hot-button constitutional disputes, but the jurisprudence of the Rehnquist majority has, in fact, been in retreat recently when it comes to affirmative action, abortion, school prayer, gay rights, and even the death penalty. In each area, conservative justices defected, creating de facto liberal majorities. When it comes to states' rights, by contrast, the conservative majority has changed constitutional law dramatically. Not long ago, few propositions could be asserted more confidently in law-school classrooms than that states enjoy almost no constitutional protection from congressional power. Now, the talk concerns increasing restraints on federal power. What may be called "Rehnquist Federalism" has not yet made a revolution, and defections occur in federalism cases, too. But Rehnquist Federalism has changed the legal landscape by limiting congressional efforts to provide everything from effective remedies against discrimination to enforcement of federal statutory guarantees of overtime pay-all in the name of "state sovereignty" and despite the arguments of the four liberals on the Court.
Fighting to be Fired (But Only with Just Cause): The Unionization of Nontenure-Track Faculty
Authors: Kirkpatrick Jennet , Robinson Ian
Published: February 2012

In the last thirty years, the share of nontenure-track faculty appointments in higher education has increased dramatically. According to the American Association of University Professors, 96 percent of all new faculty appointments in U.S. colleges and universities in 1969 were tenure-track; by the 1990s, only half of new appointments were tenure-track, and only half of these positions were full-time.
The Last Page
Authors: Walzer Michael
Published: February 2012

I am thinking slowly about the disaster of November 2. No message leaps out of the available statistics, though I have read many instant analyses. I am unsure what went wrong, despite the many suggestions that have been printed and posted. I am not engaged by the debates about whether the Democrats have to move right or left or stand their ground (if they can find it). I am sure that it is too early to say how they should move, even if we are thinking only of political tactics. And I am not interested, not yet, in who will be their/our candidate for president in 2008—even though I know (and regret) that the candidate and his or her entourage will be more important than the party and its platform.
Days and Nights in the Forest: An Indian Epic Awry
Authors: Dailey Peter
Published: February 2012

For much of the fall of 2000, a sensational crime dominated India's news. At a time when resurgent Hindu chauvinism had already called into question the possibility of a secular pluralistic nation, this affair threatened to topple the governments of two South Indian states and set off a renewal of intercommunity conflict, exposing new cracks in the Indian federation's increasingly fissiparous foundation. As V.S. Naipaul once said, India is a country of "a million little mutinies," fueled by "twenty kinds of group excess, sectarian excess, religious excess, regional excess" (in which Naipaul paradoxically foresaw a "liberation of spirit" and the "beginnings of self awareness"). The abduction of Rajkumar, a legendary idol of the Kannada screen, by a group of armed men who escaped with their captive into the South Indian jungle, was a radical instance of this phenomenon. For more than fifty years, the seventy-two-year-old actor and singer has been venerated by millions who filled theaters in Bangalore, as well as hundreds of cinema tents in small villages all over Karnataka, as the princely state of Mysore is known today. During the course of two hundred films, his roles had ranged from emperors and gods in historical and mythological extravaganzas to hard-bitten Bombay detectives or romantic heroes in more contemporary fare. Arrayed in a hairpiece, luxuriant false mustache, and eye shadow, a look of ferocity and determination animating his countenance, Rajkumar had rarely been less than convincing.
When a Tree Falls, a Bush Grows: Republican Strategy to Elect Jeb Bush
Authors: Hahn Kate
Published: February 2012

The same day that George W. Bush won the 2004 presidential election, scientists announced that the Arctic glaciers are melting at an accelerated speed as a result of increased global warming. This is evidence that the current administration is using its environmental policies to try to flood the Northeast, thereby drowning all U.S. citizens north of Virginia. This will give the Republican Party a guaranteed majority for decades to come, while at the same time removing Canada as a refuge for secular humanists. Here is how W. plans to use environmental policy to destroy the power of the remaining blue states and ensure his brother Jeb's victory in 2008.
Democracy Versus Judicial Review: Is It Time to Amend the Constitution?
Authors: Tushnet Mark
Published: February 2012

In one important respect, however, the liberal community is about as faith-based as one can get. Liberals believe in the courts as vehicles for progressive social change-a belief that remains unshaken by the Supreme Court's two-century history and the fact that it has been at best an inconstant defender of progressive values since the 1980s. Liberals were unbelievers for the first half of the twentieth century and then got religion during the short period when liberals dominated the Court. The Supreme Court and judicial review are false gods, and liberals should return to their unbelief.
Red, Blue, and Purple: American Views on Personal Morality and the Law
Authors: Dombrink John
Published: February 2012

Progressive Americans could be forgiven for thinking that things had turned screwy-or scary-in 2004. Everywhere one looked after the presidential elections, the Reverend Jerry Falwell, who many thought had flamed out with his uncompromisingly conservative religious positions and ubiquitous media role since the Reagan years, was all over the airwaves. One night, he was explaining to Chris Matthews on MSNBC's Hardball the failings of an ad campaign by the United Church of Christ, a liberal Protestant denomination, that depicted a church open to gays and lesbians-insinuating, according to Falwell and colleagues, that evangelical churches in America were bigoted. Another day he was on Meet the Press debating with progressive evangelical Christian minister Jim Wallis about the role of religion, politics, law, and society.
Rethinking the Politics of the Family: Part IV
Authors: Skolnick Arlene
Published: February 2012

Recently, a PBS Frontline documentary called "The New Asylum" showed how our jails and prisons have become, by default, the nation's mental hospitals. This wasn't an exposé. The prison under examination didn't seem particularly bad. The staff seemed to be trying their best to deal with an impossible situation. But what, you might ask, has the topic of prisons to do with the culture war and family values, the subject of this series? First, it shows how the culture war, with its focus on hot-button issues like gay marriage, end-of-life decisions, and obscenity on television, to name the most recent examples, crowds out discussion of serious social problems. More than that, however, the documentary illustrates the reductio ad absurdum of America's current political culture: its rhetoric of faith and family values combined with its tax-and-services-slashing policies, its deference to corporate power and accompanying sink-or-swim economy, its tolerance of growing inequality, its bread and circuses media, and the unprecedented reliance of the current administration on a strategy of lies and denial. As a result of all this, prisons have become the social policy of last resort. No longer just the place to incarcerate violent offenders, the prison has become the final common repository of the social problems we are unwilling to prevent or remedy before they grow into crises. Only when these problems deteriorate into matters of crime and punishment can "government spending" be justified.
Israel and UN Reform
Authors: Nossel Suzanne
Published: February 2012

Though no one realizes it, Israel may be a linchpin in this year's historic push for change at the United Nations. Israel's tortured history at the UN is emblematic of much (though by no means all) of what is wrong with the world organization. Longstanding U.S. perceptions of the UN membership as anti-Western, unprincipled, motivated by petty biases, and dominated by a herd mentality stem largely from—and are given continuing basis by—the body’s history of anti-Israel conduct. An organization that has been too fractured and passive to confront the moral challenges of our time—including Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur—has managed to adopt more than twenty resolutions chastising Israel each year since 1985. The isolation of Israel at the UN has strained the U.S.-UN relationship and undercut the legitimacy of the global body in the eyes of many Americans.
In Sickness and in Health: Health Insurance in America
Authors: Stark Andrew
Published: February 2012

A curious and revealing symmetry has developed between Republican and Democratic approaches to the issue of private health insurance. In the 2004 election campaign, John Kerry proposed that the federal government clamp a lid on premiums by relieving insurers of most of the expense for catastrophic claims—those that exceed thirty to fifty thousand dollars annually for any given individual. Democrats, in other words, identified themselves with the idea that those who are richest—those who contribute proportionately more to the federal treasury via the progressive tax base—should heavily defray the medical expenses of those who are sickest. For their part, George W. Bush and the Republicans have for some time pointed to the tendency for hospitals and health maintenance organizations (HMOs) to take money saved from premiums paid by their healthier clients—that is, patients who don't need much medical care—and use it to subsidize the expenses of the poor. This propensity, Republicans like to say, functions more effectively as a safety net than anything government could do.
'Deep Throat' and Protected Sources
Authors: Mills Nicolaus
Published: February 2012

As I watched on the evening news a frail, but clearly pleased, W. Mark Felt, the former number two official of the FBI, enjoying public recognition for the role he played as "Deep Throat" in bringing the Nixon administration to justice, I was glad that he decided not to take his secret to the grave. The least our country owed him were a few moments in the national spotlight. But the recognition of Felt's achievement did not just speak to the past. It was also a stark reminder of how today's reporters need the legal right not to disclose the names of their confidential sources. Thirty-two years later, those who went to prison for the role they played in the Watergate conspiracy are still angry with Felt. Interviewed on the day Felt's identity as Deep Throat was disclosed, Charles Colson, the special counsel to Richard Nixon, who served seven months in prison for participating in the Watergate cover-up, told the press Felt should not have been "sneaking around dark alleys and talking to reporters."
Darfur: Shame and Responsibility
Authors: Reeves Eric
Published: February 2012

Two and a half years after major conflict began in the Darfur province of far western Sudan, it is perversely clear how the future history of this tortured region will be written. Any meaningful account will be guided by a chronology that includes readily discernible signposts of genocidal destruction, beginning in spring 2003; various occasions for empty international condemnation of accelerating ethnically targeted destruction of non-Arab, or "African," tribal populations throughout Darfur; the numerous, belated stages in an inadequate humanitarian response to rapidly growing concentrations of vulnerable civilian victims; serial failures by the UN and Western democracies to confront Khartoum's génocidaires; and desperately expedient reliance upon a glib notion of "African solutions for African problems.
Soft Surveillance: Mandatory Voluntarism and the Collection of Personal Data
Authors: Marx Gary T.
Published: February 2012

In Truro, Massachusetts, at the end of 2004, police politely asked all male residents to provide a DNA sample to match with DNA material found at the scene of an unsolved murder. Residents were approached in a non-threatening manner and asked to help solve the crime. This tactic of rounding up all the usual suspects and then some is still rare in the United States for historical, legal, and logistical reasons, but it is becoming more common. The Truro case illustrates expanding trends in surveillance and social control.
Fighting at Cross-Purposes: Irving Howe vs. Ralph Ellison
Authors: Wellington Darryl Lorenzo
Published: February 2012

In the early nineteen sixties, Irving Howe and Ralph Ellison crossed swords in an exchange of vehemently argued essays. Ellison's half of the exchange remains handily available, "The World and the Jug," reprinted in his now canonical essay collection Shadow and Act. Ellison is rarely a hot-tempered essayist, but "The World and the Jug" bristles. The essay to which Ellison is abrasively responding, Howe's "Black Boys and Native Sons," (Dissent, Autumn 1963) has gotten his dander up. He is defending his raison d'être. He is reclaiming his artistic value and independence from easy political categories (especially those imposed by Marxist-influenced white critics). His oratorical powers at full blast, with resounding indignation, he is asserting nothing less than the lasting significance of art. "The World and the Jug," then, looks like the definitive statement on artistic autonomy vs. liberal condescension. Or, at least, it looks that way until one reads the somewhat less well-known Howe essay. Ellison is so blisteringly, so persuasively indignant that the Howe essay is often unjustly summarized. For example, in 1991 Mark Busby states that "Howe charged Ellison with insufficient anger and called for more protest against racism in his work." This is flat-out incorrect.
Channeling History
Authors: Mattson Kevin
Published: February 2012

When I'm at a party and tell people that I teach American history, I often hear either, "You know, I'm fascinated by the Civil War" or a disquisition about a favorite president or something about a family's past. Sometimes this response sparks an interesting conversation; often I turn glassy-eyed. No matter what, though, I like the response, because it suggests that people outside of academe have a desire to understand their own past. You can see that desire all around you—in museums, best-selling books written by David McCullough, and Hollywood movies about everything from the American Revolution to the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Homeland Health: How Environmentalism Can Regain Lost Ground
Authors: Freyfogle Eric T.
Published: February 2012

One lesson that stands out from the 2004 elections is that the environmentalist stance is due for an overhaul. Few voters treated the environment as a decisive issue. John Kerry and other pro-environment candidates had little or nothing to say about it, presumably for fear that strong comments could cost votes. Fifteen years ago the first President Bush matter-of-factly declared himself an environmentalist. Today, few Republicans and many Democrats would accept the label only with qualifications, if at all. Substantial credit for this anti-green shift goes to the capable and well-funded environmental opposition, which has been aided by journalists unwilling or unable to navigate polemical minefields. But just as much credit (or blame) belongs to the environmental movement itself, which is fragmented, incoherent, and disinclined or unable to defend itself against opposing claims. People are confused about what the cause seeks to accomplish and about the resulting costs. They worry also about the effects that environmental rules will have on liberty, private property, and the nation's ability to compete internationally.
Democratizing Science, Debating Values: New Approaches to "Politicized" Science under the Bush Administration
Authors: Kinchy Abby J. , Kleinman Daniel Lee
Published: February 2012

Scientists, politicians, and activists have repeatedly criticized the Bush administration for "politicizing" science for the sake of its policy goals. Right-wing commentators, such as Steven Milloy, have responded to these accusations with attacks of their own, reminding the public of similar actions taken by President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore. The desire for value-free science seems to be one thing on which both right and left can agree. But is this a realistic or even desirable goal? The evidence that the Bush administration has stacked advisory committees, suppressed evidence, and disregarded scientific consensus is extremely troubling. However, simply calling for a thicker "wall" between science and politics does not resolve the fundamental problems. This position assumes that science is separate from the value-laden worlds of politics and everyday life. That is not the case. Science, like other social spheres, is a universe of divergent values and interests.
Marshall Berman Responds
Authors: Berman Marshall
Published: February 2012

Marshall Berman responds to novelist A.B. Yehoshua's beliefs about identity politics in the Middle East and questions why Yehoshua only wishes a "clear identity" on Jews, rather than Arabs as well.
Defying Gravity
Authors: Meyerson Harold
Published: February 2012

In Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy, Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson—political science professors from Yale and Berkeley, respectively—direct our attention to one of the central mysteries of our time: how Republican elected officials have turned themselves into distinctly less amusing and way less lovable versions of Wile E. Coyote. How is it that the national Republican Party has been able to govern from the far right even while the public opposes it on issue after issue? Enacting policies that have no visible means of public support (indeed, that engender widespread public opposition), the Republicans, by every known law of political physics, should have long since dropped to earth. Though the party "has strayed dramatically from the moderate middle of public opinion," write Hacker and Pierson, "the normal mechanisms of democratic accountability have not been able to bring them back."
The Last Page
Authors: Phillips Maxine
Published: February 2012

Signs and portents abounded that Good Friday in New Orleans as our group of New York City high school students, parents, and teachers rolled in to spend the spring break doing "relief" work. Lawns and green median strips sprouted campaign posters for the upcoming primary. Houses displayed signs for the twenty-two would-be mayors and numerous City Council wannabes. At times, they overwhelmed the lush magnolias, honeysuckle, and azaleas flowering even as the city struggled for new life. That anyone would want to be mayor of a soon-to-be-bankrupt city should have been a sign of hope. But it was the other signs during this Passover week that reminded us why we were there. Each house searched by rescue crews carried an X with a circle around it. In the triangles were notations: the date of the search, the initials of the crew, and the number of casualties, if any. Most of the time there was a zero, but sometimes a number stood as a memorial.
No Sweat: Hard Lessons from Garment Industry History
Authors: Ross Robert J.S.
Published: February 2012

This thanksgiving 2006 will witness the anniversary almost to the day ninety-seven years ago, when the immigrant shopgirls of New York's shirtwaist factories called a general strike. This past April, and then on May Day, immigrant workers, 120 years after the first strike movement for the eight-hour day (May Day, 1886), asserted their claim to just treatment. The fall and rise of sweatshop labor in New York and elsewhere in the global garment industry is a story with lessons for our time, for the struggles over the sweatshop issue today echo the issues and contentions of a century ago. Then, as now, there was tension between workers and their middle-class allies.
Reducing Inequality: Merit Goods vs. Income Grants
Authors: Bergmann Barbara R.
Published: February 2012

The incompetence and cruelty of the Bush administration, currently on view in Iraq and New Orleans, may suffice to get the electorate to reduce Republican ascendancy in the Congress in 2006 and put a Democrat in the White House in 2008. But it would be sad for the country if the result was a reversion to the Clinton don't-do-much years. We on the left should be discussing and debating the general outlines of a program of government action to ensure a decent life for everybody. Such a program would clearly require higher government spending, financed by higher taxes, and a reduction in spending for unproductive programs. The predictable Republican chants of "tax and spend" would need to be answered by a campaign to point out to the public that there are some things worth taxing and spending for.
The Last Page
Authors: Sinsheimer Jessica
Published: February 2012

We may be young, but we don't have the luxury of feeling invincible. When one ambulance ride, hospital visit, or even prescription could mean financial ruin, the young and uninsured have to live carefully. Our situation is precarious, and we know it: we're part of the minority who wait for the walk sign before crossing the street; we cook our eggs thoroughly—not that we've known anyone with salmonella, but we don't want to risk it. And when it comes time for yearly checkups, you can bet that if we're still breathing, not bleeding, and without severe pain, we won't go. Forget dental checkups and eye exams: instead, we brush, floss, and squint. If we can read the street signs through an old pair of glasses, that's good enough for now.
Marx in China: Modern Art, Modern Conflicts, Modern Workers
Authors: Berman Marshall
Published: February 2012

A whole new deference has now appeared in Western discussions of China. "A New China Rises," said a Time magazine headline in June 2005, as it noted, "The People's Republic has embraced the modern world as never before. Is that cause for celebration or anxiety?"; "Chinese Strength, U.S. Weakness," proclaimed the New York Times in the same month, while in July 2005 it asked, "Who's Afraid of China, Inc?" and described "The New Power Brokers, Born in China, Closing Deals for U.S. Firms" and "The China Syndrome on Wall Street." Meanwhile, China has developed a brilliant film culture, a cinema reminiscent of Italian Neo-Realism, which has brought the world a vision of both the marvelous expanse of Chinese streets and the internal pressures that drive Chinese lives. China's power surge and rapid development form one of the most exciting stories of the late twentieth century.
New Orleans: A Right to Return?
Authors: Wellington Darryl Lorenzo
Published: February 2012

New Orleans has been challenging the limits of taste for over a century now. It is the city of Mardi Gras, of decadence, romance, stylish bohemianism, and, on Bourbon Street, unadulterated raunchiness. One might think that nothing could offend the residents of New Orleans. But many are offended by the spate of disaster tours currently available from local tour companies. You'll find brochures for them in the lobbies of upscale motels in the French Quarter and the Central Business District. Alongside flyers for the ubiquitous jazz and voodoo tours, there are foldouts blazoned with such headings as "Katrina: America's Worst Disaster." Open one of these, and the ad copy invites you to reexperience the tragedy, to share the pain.
A Difficult Marriage: American Protestants and American Politics
Authors: Kazin Michael
Published: February 2012

In the course of writing a biography about William Jennings Bryan, I began to appreciate a reality that transcends his own story. This anti-Darwinist reformer was not the relic of a benighted past that many modernist intellectuals—whether of the right or left—assumed him to be in the years from the rise of the New Deal to the rise of the Christian right in the 1970s. In fact, evangelical Protestantism has always been an integral part of American political history.
A Times Square for the New Millennium: Life on the Cleaned-up Boulevard
Authors: Berman Marshall
Published: February 2012

Seventeen years ago, in a devastating song, Lou Reed portrayed Forty-Second Street and Times Square as the "Dirty Boulevard." Looking at this same place today, we would have to call it "the cleaned-up boulevard." What can we say about life on the cleaned-up boulevard? The big thing is that it isn't as bad, as antiseptic, as suburban, as many of us feared. It's nice to see that Rudolph Giuliani's project of turning the keys to the city over to Disney hasn't turned the city into Disneyland. The thrill's not gone.
Affirmative Action: The Last Stand
Authors: Gerstle Gary
Published: February 2012

Given these time constraints and the narrow ways in which affirmative action programs must be constructed to pass constitutional muster, what is to be done? Should liberals devote time and energy to advancing affirmative action policies when their long-term prospects appear dim? If so, what kinds of strategies should be deployed? These are the questions that animate Ira Katznelson's provocative and engaging book When Affirmative Action Was White . One of the nation's most distinguished political scientists, Katznelson has written incisively on a broad range of subjects, from the nature and history of liberalism to the peculiarities of Congress as a governing institution. Throughout his career, he has been drawn to the study of inequality in capitalist societies and has explored its causes, manifestations, and remedies. He has long understood that capitalist, or class, inequality in America has to be understood in relation to racial inequality, and he has devoted considerable energy toward exploring those relationships and their implications for American politics.
Land versus State: Israel and its Army after the Disengagement
Authors: Peri Yoram
Published: February 2012

In the summer of 2005 the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) carried out one of its largest military campaigns in many years. Fifty thousand soldiers were sent to confront an adversary numbering ten thousand. But unlike the past, the adversary was not an external enemy. It was a section of the Israeli population. Only once before had an Israeli government ordered soldiers to bring Israeli citizens to heel. That was in 1951, three years after the establishment of the state, when the IDF broke a seamen's strike in the port of Haifa. The traumatic effect of this step on the young society was so profound that no subsequent government ventured to use the military in internal disputes among Jews. Never—until the summer of 2005.
Beyond the 'M' Word: The Tangled Web of Politics and Marriage
Authors: Skolnick Arlene
Published: February 2012

Marriage entered presidential politics for the first time as farce: Dan Quayle's June 1992 attack on the television character "Murphy Brown" for having a child while unmarried. In the wake of the Los Angeles riots, the then-vice president addressed the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. "The lawless social anarchy which we saw," he argued, "is directly related to the breakdown of family structure." The poverty at the root of the disorders was a "poverty of morals." At the very end of speech, he denounced "Murphy Brown" and her Hollywood creators for "mocking fatherhood," glamorizing single motherhood, and thereby encouraging family disintegration among the poor. The attack on a popular television show launched a media frenzy and a torrent of late night talk-show jokes.
Bits of Blue: A New Orleans Diary
Authors: Henderson Elizabeth
Published: February 2012

As our plane circled over New Orleans, I fixed my eyes on the window. I wanted a perspective on the damage below that did not come secondhand from television or the papers. Soon our group from Sarah Lawrence College—a professor, a dean, nine students, and two alumnae—would be landing. It was January 5. We had come for a nine-day stay to work with ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. I expected utter devastation—miles and miles of storm-ravaged homes and communities. Instead, I saw endless bits of blue. I thought that they were swimming pools. Later I found out that what I had seen were blue tarps put on houses to protect them from the wind.
A Life in Violent Motion
Authors: Snitow Ann
Published: February 2012

This lightweight book is being reviewed everywhere because of the following intensely engaging facts: Its author, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, was born into a prominent Muslim family in Somalia in 1969. Her father, Hirsi Magan, was a leader of the anticommunist opposition and was forced to flee Somalia—followed by his family—to Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, and finally, Kenya. During these years of strict Muslim girlhood, her grandmother saw to it that Ayaan had a clitoridectomy.
Europe's Choice
Authors: Berman Sheri
Published: February 2012

Over the last several years a rift has opened beneath the Atlantic, pushing the United States and Europe farther apart. One cause has been increasingly different approaches to foreign policy. Another has been a sense that Europeans and Americans have distinct approaches to domestic affairs as well. Alongside the shelf of books chronicling transatlantic disputes over Iraq, terrorism, the United Nations, and similar topics, another shelf is filling up with analyses of how the "European model" is not just different from the American one but superior to it. This literature (T.R. Reid's The United States of Europe: The New Superpower and the End of American Supremacy; Jeremy Rifkin's The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream; and Mark Leonard's Why Europe Will Run the 21st Century) does a good job of pointing out the chinks in America's armor and highlighting the ways Europessimists have overdone their gloomy portrait of the continent and its future. The books tend to have significant flaws of their own, however—including, oddly enough, a shared blind spot regarding Europe's true hope for long-term greatness and the obstacles it must surmount to achieve it.
Institutional Damage
Authors: Metzgar Jack
Published: February 2012

The great strength of John Hoerr's Harry, Tom, and Father Rice: Accusation and Betrayal in America's Cold War is how strongly it reminds us that each decision made and action taken (or not taken) by not-quite-common people reverberates through their own and others' lives. Hoerr's book is the human face of the cold war on the home front. What's missing, however, is an assessment of the damage done by this clash of union titans in 1949 and an analysis of the causes. What was damaged irrevocably were institutions, not persons—Local 601, the UE, the CIO, the larger labor movement, and the democratic prospects of the postwar world. All recovered in some form or fashion, but with diminished capacity. We have less to lose today, less to try and defend, because they got less than they had hoped for and in 1948 could reasonably have expected.
Burn, Bébé , Burn
Authors: Sugrue Thomas J.
Published: February 2012

For decades, the French have perceived themselves as immune to the racially polarized politics of the United States, liberated by a national rhetoric of "universalism" and color blindness. What was most striking about the tumult that swept through France last fall was not how distinctly French it was, but how much it looked like the United States during the "long hot summer" of 1967. The parallels were striking—and the lessons for France are grim.
The Jihadism of Fools
Authors: Halliday Fred
Published: February 2012

Over the last few years, and especially since the American invasion of Iraq in March 2003, there have been indications across the world of a growing convergence between the forces of Islamist militancy, on the one hand, and the "anti-imperialist" left on the other. Leaving aside widespread, if usually unarticulated, sympathy for the attacks of September 11, 2001, justified on the grounds that "the Americans deserved it," we have seen since 2003 an overt coincidence of policies, with considerable support for the Iraqi "resistance," which includes strong Islamist elements, and, more recently and even more explicitly, support for Hezbollah in Lebanon. In the Middle East itself, and on parts of the European far left, an overt alliance with Islamists has been established, going back at least to the mass demonstrations in early 2003 that preceded the Iraq War, but also including a convergence of slogans on Palestine-supporting suicide bombings and denying the legitimacy of the Israeli state. Last year, for example, radical Basque demonstrators were preceded by a militant waving a Hezbollah flag. Moreover, since most of those who oppose the U.S. action in Iraq of 2003 also opposed the war in Afghanistan in 2001, this leads, whether clearly recognized or not, to support for the anti-Western Taliban, armed groups now active across that country.
Iran and the West: A Symposium
Authors: Avineri Shlomo
Published: February 2012

The editors of Dissent asked a number of distinguished commentators to respond to the following statement and questions: For a quarter of a century, Iran has been ruled by a militant theocracy. After the shah's regime—authoritarian, brutal, and backed by the united States—was over-thrown, the new regime quickly proved itself to be authoritarian, cruel, and self-warranted by Islamic fundamentalism. Reform efforts have proved chimerical, and Tehran has pursued nuclear capabilities with vigor, long deceiving the International Atomic Energy Agency and Western interlocutors about its efforts. To what extent should the character of the Iranian regime govern Western responses to its ambitions? Should Iran be considered just one state among others, seeking its legitimate self-interests? What "threat" does the current Iranian regime pose in today's world?
Exporting Democracy: What Have We Learned from Iraq?
Authors: Archibugi Daniele
Published: February 2012

The democratic ideal can be presented to peoples and countries that have not yet embraced it in two entirely opposite ways: through persuasion or through coercion and force.
Art Meets Politics: How Judy Chicago's Dinner Party Came to Brooklyn
Authors: Levin Gail
Published: February 2012

An icon of American art, Judy Chicago's Dinner Party is the focus of the new Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum. The generous and elegant facility features 8,300 square feet dedicated to showing art reflecting "the core values of feminism—equality and justice." The story of how The Dinner Party came not once, but twice to Brooklyn, exemplifies the nexus of art and politics.
The Last Page
Authors: Moore Matt
Published: February 2012

If you aspire to write, calling yourself a writer doesn’t make it so. You must first have written a book, compiled a few decent magazine clips, or have a mildly snarky and occasionally read blog to make the leap into the rarefied world of the published author.
'I Was Sick During the Genocide': Remembering to Forget in Contemporary Rwanda
Authors: Stansell Christine
Published: February 2012

Nothing, I remember nothing," the middler-aged witness insisted to the court. "I was sick during the the genocide." She was standing before a man accused of multiple murders, an audience of her neighbors, and a row of judges at a session of gacaca, one of nine thousand local sessions set up by the Rwandan government in 2001 to try tens of thousands charged with participating in the 1994 genocide. On a Saturday last June, some thirty people from surrounding farms gathered outside a small government building tucked into a space between fields to participate in the trials of three prisoners. The scene was bucolic when I arrived—lush fields, twittering birds, butterflies. The simple structure, a galvanized roof over wooden benches, looked oddly like a picnic pavilion in a quiet American park. But the serenity was belied by the tense silence that hung over the crowd, as everyone waited to begin. The prisoners sat in front. One, a stooped middle-aged man, was nervous and fidgety; the other two, in their mid to late twenties, affected aggressive indifference.
Exporting Democracy: What Have We Learned from Iraq?
Authors: Berman Paul
Published: February 2012

The question seems to me wrongly put in one aspect. To hurl curses and insults at the Bush administration is a worthy, right, and just thing to do; and yet there is no reason to trip all over ourselves in acknowledging that Bush and his administration did sincerely desire to achieve a democratic outcome in Iraq. For some sixty years before the Iraq War, American policy in the Middle East had nothing to do with democracy. American policy was based on a principle of malign stability, conducted in the belief that stable dictatorships would guarantee American interests.
Exporting Democracy: What Have We Learned from Iraq?
Authors: Lister John
Published: February 2012

Baghdad: Although there are arguably many different kinds of democracies in the world, an Arab one has yet to be established. Iraq is not the first attempt; elections organized largely domestically have been a regular, if not frequent, occurrence in the Arab world. One only need think back to elections that by any reasonable standard were fair: the Palestinian parliamentary elections in 1995 (in addition to subnational elections, for trade union or student body organizations, that do take place regularly), Yemeni elections for both Parliament and the president, and a series of elections in Lebanon. Iraq itself has had three elections since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. But in no case have these elections, even when relatively successful, led to or even appreciably advanced the growth of democratic systems in these countries.
The Abortion Procedure Ban: Bush's Gift to his Base
Authors: Joffe Carole
Published: February 2012

"We've got to keep our patients safe, and our doctors out of jail." The speaker is a physician who performs abortions at a large clinic on the West Coast. Her remarks come at a professional meeting attended by many abortion providers, just days after the Supreme Court announced its decision on Gonzales v. Carhart ("Carhart II"), which upheld a ban passed by Congress on so-called "partial birth abortion," or the procedure doctors call "intact D&E" (also referred to sometimes as "intact dilation and evacuation," or "D&X," for "extraction").Normally, physicians at professional conferences don't strategize how to keep out of jail. (The ban provides for a two-year jail term and a $250,000 fine for those convicted of performing this procedure.) Normally, moreover, one does not expect to see Congress or the Supreme Court privilege its own judgments about appropriate medical practice over that of the most relevant professional associations of doctors involved in a particular branch of medicine, in this case abortion care. (Indeed, the only ob/gyn in the Senate, Tom Coburn [R-OK] is an antiabortion zealot who is on record as favoring the death penalty for "abortionists and other people who take life.") To no avail, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, Planned Parenthood, and the National Abortion Federation, the leading professional association of abortion providers, spoke out forcefully against this ban.
"I'm not a feminist, but . ."
Authors: Sinsheimer Jessica
Published: February 2012

Megan Seely promises fearlessness. At twenty-eight, she was the youngest woman to have been leader of the California chapter of the National Organization for Women. Before that, she was the organization's youth coordinator, a position specifically created for her. Now in her early thirties, she gives the impression of a much older author—but one in touch with the current state of the movement. She writes with a very specific purpose: to prepare the next generation of young women—with history, media guidelines, overviews of major issues, and techniques of activism—to bravely tackle the unique challenges of feminism in this generation.
American Families: Changes in the Twentieth Century
Authors: Katz Michael B. , Stern Mark J.
Published: February 2012

What narrative best characterizes the history of American families? Should their story be read nostalgically, as one of decline from an era when two-parent families with children dominated the domestic landscape but as one of relative stability over time or should it emphasize fundamental changes undermining the very concept of "family" itself? Did a singular "American family" ever exist or has diversity been the hallmark of America's families throughout the twentieth century? These questions underlie the exchange between E. Kay Trimberger and Arlene Skolnick that followed Skolnick's article on marriage. ( Dissent , Fall 2006 and Spring 2007). Trimberger emphasizes change; Skolnick argues that both conservative and progressive writers on family overlook continuity. Both cite statistics that buttress their cases. How, then, are we to resolve the issue? The question is important because, as both authors contend, divergent narratives of family history lead in different directions. Conservatives, for instance, have equated "family decline" with moral decay and used it to justify a variety of antiprogressive positions.
Beyond Human Nature
Authors: Geras Norman
Published: February 2012

Attempting to answer the question "What is the meaning of life?" over the space of a short essay might be considered an enterprise worth avoiding. The chances of falling flat on your face or coming up empty-handed, of not having anything either interesting or persuasive to say, must be high. This is what Terry Eagleton has undertaken, however, and he has done a pretty good job. He succeeds in his stated aim of handling the question both "lightly and lucidly," the range of philosophical and literary reference he draws on sustains the reader's interest, and the answer he comes around to offering, though put forward only in the modest terms that "one could do worse" than to propose it as the meaning of life, strikes this reviewer as having a lot going for it.
The Last Page
Authors: Mills Nicolaus
Published: February 2012

Just six months after the American invasion of Iraq began, President George W. Bush went before the United Nations General Assembly to announce that he was prepared to make "the greatest financial commitment of its kind since the Marshall Plan" in order to rebuild Iraq. The president's decision to link his policy in Iraq with George Marshall's policy in post–World War II Europe reminds us of how influential the Marshall Plan remains sixty years after it was conceived. But the president's effort at linkage also reminds us of how enormously talented the men around Marshall were in the 1947–48 period in which he served as secretary of state.