scholarly journals The Jewish Obligation to Stand Up against Islamophobia in the United States

2004 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 175-182
Author(s):  
Lisabeth Kaplan ◽  
Paul Roochnik
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Physical Violence ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Muslim Countries ◽  
Trade Unionist ◽  
The Usa ◽  
History Of

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out –because I was not a communist;Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out –because I was not a socialist;Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out –because I was not a trade unionist;Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out –because I was not a Jew;Then they came for me –and there was no one left to speak out for me.The German anti-Nazi Protestant minister, Martin Niemoeller, spoke thesepoignant words following the end of World War II. Pastor Niemoellerreminds us that whenever society singles out a specific minority for abuse,the rest of society must resist. What folly it is to believe that during a timeof insecurity and suspicion, any minority – religious, ethnic, or political –can long enjoy immunity from oppression. The Jewish people, perhapsmore than other minorities, has an intimate familiarity with the plight ofthe scapegoat, a 2,000 year history of diaspora and minority status, withall the cruelty and violence that has accompanied this experience. In thiswork, we will cite Biblical sources, cultural traditions, and rabbinic teachings to express the inescapable obligation of Jews to stand in solidaritywith Muslims in their time of need.Make no mistake about it: Muslims now confront unprecedented discriminationand harassment in the United States. In a recent report, theAmerican-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) reports a significantincrease in the frequency of hate crimes and acts of discriminationperpetrated against Arabs (both Muslims and Christians) and non-ArabMuslims.1 The list includes hundreds of acts of physical violence, some 60incidents of Arab or Muslim passengers being prevented from traveling onairlines simply because of their “profile,” several hundred employmentdiscrimination cases, and serious concerns arising from the USA PatriotAct. Tabloid media and bigoted radio talk show hosts contribute to anatmosphere of Islamophobia, and some Americans associate the word“Muslim” or “Arab” with “terrorist.” Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, conservativepundit Ann Coulter, commenting on Arab and Muslim countries,suggested that “we should invade their countries, kill their leaders andconvert them to Christianity.”2 An Islamophobic atmosphere has takenhold in the United States, targeting Muslims not for any crime, but merelyfor being Muslims ...

Japanese American Buddhism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michihiro Ama ◽  
Michael Masatsugu
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
The United States ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
World War ◽  
Japanese Buddhism ◽  
American Buddhism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Jodo Shinshu

Japanese Buddhism was introduced to the United States at the Parliament of World Religions in Chicago in 1893, but the development of Japanese American Buddhism, also known as Nikkei Buddhism, really began when Japanese migrants brought Buddhism with them to Hawaii and the continental United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It has been influenced by, and has reflected, America’s sociopolitical and religious climate and the US relationship to Japan, to which generations of Japanese Americans, such as Issei (literally, first generation, referring to Japanese immigrants), Nisei (second-generation American-born offspring of the Issei), and Sansei (third generation), responded differently. While adapting to American society, Japanese American Buddhists maintained their cultural practices and ethnoreligious identity. The history of Japanese American Buddhism discussed in this article spans from the late-19th Century to the 1970s and is divided into three major periods: the pre-World War II, World War II, and the postwar eras. Japanese American Buddhism is derived from the various Buddhist organizations in Japan. The Nishi Hongwanji denomination of Jōdo Shinshū, a form of Pure Land Buddhism known as Shin Buddhism in the West, is the oldest and largest form of ethnic Japanese Buddhism in the United States. In Hawaii, Nishi Hongwanji founded the Hompa Hongwanji Mission of Hawaii (HHMH) in Honolulu in 1897. On the continental United States, it established the Buddhist Mission of North America (BMNA) in San Francisco in 1898, currently known as the Buddhist Churches of America (BCA). Other Japanese Buddhist organizations also developed in the United States at the beginning of the 20th century. They include the Jōdo-shū, another sect of Pure Land Buddhism; Higashi Hongwanji, another major denomination of Jōdoshin-shū; Sōtō-shū, a Zen Buddhist school; Shingon-shū, known as Kōyasan Buddhism; and Nichiren-shū. The characteristics of Japanese American Buddhism changed significantly during World War II, when approximately 120,000 persons of Japanese descent living in the West Coast states were incarcerated because of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066. The postwar period witnessed a rapid transformation in the status and visibility of Japanese Buddhism in the United States. This transformation was driven by the promotion of ethnonational Buddhism by Nisei and by the growth of interest in Zen Buddhism among the general American public. The positive reception of Japanese Buddhism in the United States reflected and reinforced the transformed relationship between the United States and Japan from wartime enemies to Cold War partners. While they experienced greater receptivity and interest in Buddhism from nonethnics, they could no longer practice or espouse Jōdo Shinshū teachings or adapted practices without clarification. Debates concerning the authenticity of Jōdo Shinshū Buddhism and Japanese American Buddhist practices were interwoven within a longer history of American Orientalism. By the 1960s, Japanese American Buddhist communities were transformed by the addition of a small but vocal nonethnic membership and a new generation of Sansei Buddhists. Demands for English-speaking ministers resulted in the creation, in 1967, of the Institute of Buddhist Studies, the first graduate-level training program in the United States endorsed by Nishi Hongwanji. This article is an overview of Japanese American Buddhism with a focus on the development of the Nishi Hongwanji Shin Buddhist organizations in the United States. English scholarship on the development of other Japanese Buddhist organizations in the United States is still limited. Throughout the history of Japanese American Buddhism, Nikkei Buddhists negotiated with America’s political institutions and Christian churches, as well as with Euro-American Buddhists, over Buddhist and cultural practices to maintain and redefine their ethnoreligious tradition. Buddhist temples provided the space for them to gather and build a community of shared faith and cultural heritage, discuss their place and the role of Buddhism in American society, and express their concerns to America’s general public.

scholarly journals The socio-political context of the application of fair selection models in the usa

1996 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
G. K. Huysamen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South African ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
Personnel Selection ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Context ◽  
Preferential Treatment ◽  
Selection Models ◽  
The Usa ◽  
History Of

In an earlier article, the psychometrics of various fair selection models that had been proposed in the United States of America in the late 1960s, early 1970s were presented. The purpose of the present article is to discuss the subsequent history of the application of these models in personnel selection in that country and to view its implications for the South African situation. Because the question of fair selection models ties in with the issue of affirmative action, a brief history of this issue as it pertains to personnel selection is also given. Key decisions of the American Supreme Court that have a bearing on this matter are also reviewed. The failure to widely apply these fair selection models may be attributed to the prevalent socio-political context which favours the preferential treatment of certain groups but is hesitant to specify the particulars and limits of such treatment. Opsomming 'n Vorige artikel het die psigometi-ika onderliggend aan verskeie billike keuringsmodelle wat in die laat sestigerjare, vroee sewentigerjare in die Verenigde State van Amerika voorgestel is, behandel. Die doel met die onderhawige artikel is om 'n oorsig te verskaf van die daaropvolgende geskiedenis van die toepassing van daardie modelle in personeelkeuring in daardie land, en om die implikasies daarvan vir die Suid-Afrikaanse situasie te belig. Omdat die aangeleentheid van billike keuringsmodelle verband hou met die kwessie van regstellende aksie, word 'n bondige geskiedenis van hierdie kwessie soos dit op personeelkeuring van toepassing is, ook verskaf. Sleutel-uitsprake van die Amerikaanse Hooggeregshof wat betrekking het op hierdie aangeleentheid word ook beskou. Die beperkte toepassing van hierdie billike keuringsmodelle kan toegeskryf word aan die heersende sosio-politieke konteks wat die voorkeurbehandeling van bepaalde groepe voorstaan, maar wat huiwerig is om die besonderhede en perke van sodanige behandeling te spesifiseer.

Broad Access and Steep Stratification in the First Mass System: High Participation Higher Education in the United States of America

2018 ◽  
pp. 227-265 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brendan Cantwell
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
United States ◽  
System Development ◽  
The United States ◽  
Present Condition ◽  
History Of Higher Education ◽  
Higher Education System ◽  
High Participation ◽  
The Usa ◽  
History Of

This chapter provides a detailed and extensive assessment of the United States of America’s (USA) high participation systems (HPS) of higher education. It considers the history of higher education, system development, and the present condition of higher education in the country. The USA was the first HPS and the American system remains globally influential. Higher education in the USA is a massive enterprise, defined by both excellent and dubious providers, broad inclusion, and steep inequality. The chapter further examines higher education in the USA in light of the seventeen HPS propositions. Perhaps more so than any other system, the American HPS conforms to the propositions. Notably, higher education in the USA is both more diverse horizontally, and stratified vertically, than most other HPS.

Counting Americans

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Schor
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Social History ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Racial Ideologies ◽  
Conflicting Demands ◽  
History Of

By telling how the US census classified and divided Americans by race and origin from the founding of the United States to World War II, this book shows how public statistics have been used to create an unequal representation of the nation. From the beginning, the census was a political undertaking, torn between the conflicting demands of the state, political actors, social scientists, businesses, and interest groups. Through the extensive archives of the Bureau of the Census, it traces the interactions that led to the adoption or rejection of changes in the ways different Americans were classified, as well as the changing meaning of seemingly stable categories over time. Census workers and directors by necessity constantly interpreted official categories in the field and in the offices. The difficulties they encountered, the mobilization and resistance of actors, the negotiations with the census, all tell a social history of the relation of the state to the population. Focusing in detail on slaves and their descendants, on racialized groups, and on immigrants, as well as on the troubled imposition of US racial categories upon the population of newly acquired territories, the book demonstrates that census-taking in the United States has been at its core a political undertaking shaped by racial ideologies that reflect its violent history of colonization, enslavement, segregation, and discrimination.

In Defense of Justice

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eileen H. Tamura
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
World War ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

As a leading dissident in the World War II concentration camps for Japanese Americans, Joseph Yoshisuke Kurihara stands out as an icon of Japanese American resistance. In this biography, Kurihara's life provides a window into the history of Japanese Americans during the first half of the twentieth century. Born in Hawaiʻi to Japanese parents who immigrated to work on the sugar plantations, Kurihara was transformed by the forced removal and incarceration of ethnic Japanese during World War II. As an inmate at Manzanar in California, Kurihara became one of the leaders of a dissident group within the camp and was implicated in “the Manzanar incident,” a serious civil disturbance that erupted on December 6, 1942. In 1945, after three years and seven months of incarceration, he renounced his U.S. citizenship and boarded a ship for Japan, never to return to the United States. Shedding light on the turmoil within the camps as well as the sensitive and formerly unspoken issue of citizenship renunciation among Japanese Americans, this book explores one man's struggles with the complexities of loyalty and dissent.

Brainstorming Revisited

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-69
Author(s):  
Claudia Mareis
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Creativity Research ◽  
Human Creativity ◽  
Self Actualization ◽  
History Of

This article discusses a particular strand in the history of creativity in the mid-twentieth century shaped by an instrumental, production-oriented understanding of the term. When the field of creativity research emerged in the United States after World War II, debates around creativity were driven not only by humanist intents of self-actualization but also by the aim of rendering individual creative potentials productive for both society and economy. Creativity was thus defined in terms of not mere novelty and originality but utility and productivity. There was a strong interest, too, in methods and techniques that promised to systematically enhance human creativity. In this context, the article looks at the formation of brainstorming, a group-based creativity method that came into fashion in the United States around 1950. It discusses how this method had been influenced by concepts of human productivity developed and applied during World War II and prior to it. Using the brainstorming method as a case in point, this article aims not only to shed light on the quite uncharted history of creativity in the mid-twentieth century, but also to stress the conducive role of allegedly trivial creativity methods in the rise of what sociologist Andreas Reckwitz has identified as the “creativity dispositif”: a seemingly playful, but indeed rigid, imperative in post-Fordist and neoliberal societies that demand the constant production of innovative outcomes under flexible, yet self-exploitative working conditions.

America: Promised Land or Wasteland

1973 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 291-301 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth W. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
World War ◽  
Promised Land ◽  
The World ◽  
Anniversary Issue ◽  
History Of ◽  
Hans Morgenthau

Hamilton Fish Armstrong, retiring editor of the influential quarterly, Foreign Affairs, writes in its fiftieth anniversary issue: “Not since we withdrew into comfortable isolation in 1920 has the prestige of the United States stood so low.” Lest his judgment be construed as political rhetoric, it should be noted that Armstrong has been an advisor to both major political parties. And if anyone doubts that there is cause for this critique, he need only consider the following: the United States, which in the 1940's and 1950's had an “automatic majority” in votes at the United Nations, has learned in the 1960's what it means to be outvoted in this same assembly. Americans, who during and after World War II trumpeted the cause of anticolonialism and the end of aggression, are today condemned as imperialists and aggressors. And while we have been heralded since 1946 as the most powerful nation in the history of the world, a tiny and divided nation among the less developed of Southeast Asia has fought us to a standstill. Is it any wonder Armstrong can write of the decline of America and point to the loss of our prestige in the world? Or that Hans Morgenthau can say: “America no longer sets an example for other nations to emulate; in many respects it sets an example of what to avoid”

The United States Army's History of World War II

1955 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 32 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. C. Helfers
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
History Of

An Interview with Harris Gaylord Warren: From the Borderlands to Paraguay

1989 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 443-460
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
United States Army ◽  
North American ◽  
Military Service ◽  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
History Of

Harris Gaylord Warren was, by common consent, the father of Paraguayan studies in the United States. His broad-ranging activities —from diplomatic undertakings in South America to military service in Italy to administrative and scholarly work at various North American universities—marked him as an historian of rare depth and insight. Not commonly known is that Dr. Warren began his career as a historian in the 1930s as a borderlands specialist. The Sword was their Passport: A History of American Filibustering in the Mexican Revolution (Baton Rouge, 1943) is yet recognized as the definitive work on North American adventurers in that turbulent era. As an officer in the United States Army in World War II he was selected for various military history projects. After the war Dr. Warren returned to teaching and then administration. At that time his publications ranged from texts to Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression, (New York, 1959).

History of the United States Naval Operations in World War II

1955 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 148
Author(s):  
Albert F. Simpson ◽  
Samuel Eliot Morison
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Naval Operations
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