scholarly journals Editor's Column: Collateral Damage

PMLA ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 119 (5) ◽  
pp. 1209-1215
Author(s):  
Marianne Hirsch
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Response ◽  
The United States ◽  
Visual Images ◽  
Collateral Damage ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Armed Services Committee ◽  
Donald Rumsfeld ◽  
Armed Services ◽  
Abu Ghraib Prison

In an interview following his 7 may 2004 testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Donald Rumsfeld, the United States secretary of defense, admitted knowing about abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison since they were first exposed in January. He also knew of the existence of photographs documenting the abuses, but he had not studied the images until shortly before they were shown to the public during the first week of May. In asserting that “[i]t is the photographs that give one the vivid realization of what actually took place” and that “[w]ords don't do it,” Rumsfeld expressed, and even surpassed, one of the prime clichés of our time, that a picture is worth a thousand words. Before the power of visual images, the subject has an uncontrollable emotional response: “you cannot help but be outraged.”

Guarding the Guardians through Oversight

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda L. Fowler
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
National Security ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
Executive Branch ◽  
Public Hearings ◽  
Armed Services Committee ◽  
Armed Services ◽  
Legislative Influence ◽  
Abu Ghraib Prison ◽  
Previous Scholarship

This chapter reviews previous scholarship about congressional scrutiny of the executive branch and about general patterns of legislative influence on foreign policy decisions. In the spring of 2004, the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee proposed public hearings regarding the conduct and objectives of the Iraq War. A month later, Senator John Warner, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, scheduled two days of hearings to investigate abuse of detainees at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib Prison. The chapter examines the hearing activity of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees from 1947 to 2008 to assess the overall trends in oversight and identify similarities and differences in their behavior. It also considers what scholars know about congressional involvement in U.S. foreign policy, what they have concluded about oversight of national security more generally, and why these perspectives do not appear to fit together.

Puget Sound's Security Codependencyand Western Cold War Histories, 1950–1984

2011 ◽  
Vol 80 (2) ◽  
pp. 268-293
Author(s):  
Brian G. Casserly
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
Puget Sound ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nuclear Movement ◽  
The Public ◽  
War Experience ◽  
Armed Services ◽  
The Military

Puget Sound provides a case study of significant changes in the West's Cold War experience and illustrates that this era can be understood in terms of two distinct phases, with a turning point in the late 1960s/early 1970s. This transition saw shifts in relationships between Puget Sound residents and the military, from a traditional, almost unanimous support for the military's presence in the region, to the development of a much more hostile attitude among some segments of the public. This change reflected growing concerns about the environment and skepticism about military-related economic growth. It was also shaped by concerns about nuclear weapons and the role of the armed services in U.S. foreign relations, the result of the rebirth of the anti-nuclear movement across the United States in the 1970s.

“We Find Ourselves Preoccupied with the World of the Present”: Humanist Resistance to Progressive Education in Ontario

2015 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 294-318
Author(s):  
Theodore Michael Christou
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Progressive Education ◽  
School Organization ◽  
The United States ◽  
Curriculum Theory ◽  
The Public ◽  
Faculty Psychology ◽  
Rapid Social Change ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Subject

The work here explores the voices of Ontario's humanist educators, who advocated for the preservation of a curriculum theory rooted in faculty psychology, mental discipline, and the classics in the face of progressivist revisions to the province's public school organization. A great deal of scholastic sweat has been poured over the subject of progressive education, its meanings, and its purposes. Much less has been said about the critics of progressivist reform, who are referred to here as humanists; this term follows from the work of Herbert Kliebard, who characterized humanists as one of four competing interests in an epic struggle over the curriculum in the United States. Theodore Christou dubbed humanists “foils” to the progressivist reformers who succeeded in overturning Ontario'sProgrammes of Studyfor the public schools. Kliebard defined this group as:the guardians of an ancient tradition tied to the power of reason and the finest elements of the Western cultural heritage… to them fell the task of reinterpreting, and thereby preserving as best as they could, their revered traditions and values in the face of rapid social change and a burgeoning school system.

scholarly journals The Study’s Origins and Methodology

2021 ◽  
pp. 9-16
Author(s):  
Daniela Bandelli
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Women's Movement ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
The United States ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
International Debate ◽  
The Public ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
The Subject ◽  
United States Mexico

AbstractThis chapter discusses the origin, spirit, objectives and methodology of this study on the surrogacy international debate. The aim of this study is to explain the politics of signification on surrogacy carried out especially by the women’s movement, verifying how it is contributing to the public discourse and policies on the subject, how it is being organized, as well as dividing, and how the proposed instances fit into global discourses and are recontextualized on the basis of social specificities. These aims are pursued through three case studies in the United States, Mexico and Italy. The key concepts of the theoretical framework of the research will also be described in this chapter, such as: the women’s movement, diagnostic and prognostic frames.

Biblical Lessons on Third-Party Reproduction

2020 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 3-4
Author(s):  
Richard Whitekettle ◽  
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Heterosexual Couples ◽  
The Public ◽  
Same Sex Couples ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Sperm Donors ◽  
The World ◽  
Third Party Reproduction ◽  
The Subject

Third-party reproduction uses ovum donors, sperm donors, embryo donors, and gestational surrogates in various combinations to create a child for heterosexual couples, same-sex couples, and individuals to raise. Its use is increasing in the United States and around the world, and it is increasingly the subject of legislation. But third-party reproduction tells the individuals who provide the ovum, sperm, and gestation required to create a child that they are reproductive mechanisms, not reproductive persons. By contrast, multiple stories in the Bible involving third-party reproduction recognize the motherhood and fatherhood, and thus the reproductive personhood, of those whose sexual union brings forth a new child. This is an important point for people of faith and the public to be mindful of.

Nationality: Jus Soli or Jus Sanguinis

1930 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Brown Scott
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Public Law ◽  
Private International Law ◽  
The Public ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
Difference Of Opinion ◽  
The Status ◽  
Women And Children ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Government

There is no topic of present interest, involving as it does the status of men, women and children of various countries, and even of birth in the same country, as that of nationality. It bristles with difficulties! To begin with, various terms are used, apparently meant to mean one and the same thing, although unless they are carefully defined, they may refer to different aspects of the subject. For example, “ national” is used as a synonym for “ subject” or “ citizen,” yet one may be a national of a country, and subject to its jurisdiction, without, however, being a citizen—as in the case of the Filipinos, who are, indeed, subject to the Government of the United States and entitled to its protection abroad, although they are not citizens either in the sense of international, or of national law. Then there is a difference of opinion as to the branch of law to which the matter belongs—the Englishspeaking peoples regarding it as forming part of the public law of nations, whereas others consider it as more properly falling within the domain of private international law, to which, in turn, the English world gives the not inappropriate designation of conflict of laws.

Extreme Advocacy Leadership in the Pre-Reform House: Wright Patman and the House Banking and Currency Committee

1985 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
John E. Owens
Keyword(s):  
House Of Representatives ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Academic Literature ◽  
Congressional Committees ◽  
Rules Committee ◽  
Armed Services Committee ◽  
Advocacy Leadership ◽  
Armed Services ◽  
Bear Witness

Committee chairmen in the United States House of Representatives were often very powerful figures until the reforms of the early 1970s – as the numerous tales about those stereotyped villains, the southern Democrats, bear witness. Yet, surprisingly little explicit typologizing about leadership in congressional committees appears in the academic literature despite a growing awareness of the different goals which congressmen pursue and the variety of environments in which they operate. Just two different models of chairmen's power were developed in the context of the pre-reform Congress. In the 1950s and early 1960s, the accepted view, perhaps caricature, was that committee chairmen were autocratic, obstructionist (at least as far as liberals were concerned), conservative, possibly senile, and more than likely representative of constituencies outside the mainstream of national politics. A list of chairmen seen as fitting into this mould would include men such as ‘Judge’ Howard Smith, chairman of the Rules Committee from 1955 to 1967; his somewhat less skilful successor from 1967 to 1972, William Colmer of Mississippi; Graham Barden, the provocative chairman of the Education and Labor Committee between 1953 and 1960; and the authoritative Carl Vinson of Georgia, chairman of the Armed Services Committee for seventeen years until 1966.

scholarly journals The First Amendment and the End of the World

2007 ◽  
Vol 68 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stewart Harris
Keyword(s):  
First Amendment ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nuclear Nonproliferation ◽  
Weapons Of Mass Destruction ◽  
Biological Weapons ◽  
The Public ◽  
Chemical And Biological Weapons ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Mere Possession ◽  
Types Of Information

This paper deals with a serious question that is largely unaddressed by the U.S. or international legal systems: how should society deal with inherently, catastrophically dangerous information—information that, in the wrong hands, could lead to the destruction of a city, a continent, or, conceivably, the entire planet? Such information includes, but is not limited to, blueprints for nuclear weapons, as well as specific formulae for chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction. The paper is not a critique of the existing statutes and regulations that various governments use to keep their secrets secret. Rather, it is a discussion of what to do when some such secrets are inevitably disclosed, or, more generally, how to deal with catastrophically dangerous information that is generated outside of governmental control. Addressing these issues is primarily a matter of policy, but policy with significant constitutional dimensions. Perhaps the most fundamental of thosedimensions is the question of whether a governmental restriction on receipt, dissemination, and even mere possession of information can be reconciled with the speech and press clauses of the First Amendment. Although existing authorities do not directly address the subject, what little authority there is suggests that reasonable restrictions upon the possession and dissemination of catastrophically dangerous information—even when that information is already within the public domain—can be implemented in a way that is consistent with the First Amendment. Given the growing urgency of the subject and the need for a comprehensive approach, I advocate a statutory solution in the United States that defines and limits access to catastrophically dangerous information, but which also limits governmental seizures and restrictions to only the most dangerous types of information, and which provides for a pre-seizure warrant requirement and expedited post-seizure judicial review. Given the global dimensions of the problem, I also advocate a corresponding international regime patterned upon the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty of 1968.

scholarly journals Organisational culture and safety: an interdependent relationship

2002 ◽  
Vol 25 (6) ◽  
pp. 181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoff Clark
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Human Error ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The United States ◽  
Organisational Culture ◽  
System Failures ◽  
The Public ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Health Care Safety

Since the early 1990s,a body of evidence regarding the lack of quality in health care has emerged in many countries including Australia, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and the United States of America. It has brought the subject of health care safety to the top of the policy agenda and the forefront of the public debate worldwide. Studies show not only that failure of quality occurs, but also that it inflicts harm and wastes resources on a large scale. Experts in risk management, both within and outside the health care industry, emphasize system failures and system-driven errors over direct human error, and accentuate the crucial role that organisational culture plays in ensuring safety. Examination of the interrelationship between culture and safety in organisations demonstrates that organisational relationships influence both culture and safety and that effective two-way communication is pivotal to the success of the development of a corporate 'safety culture'.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document