“A Higher and Purer Shape”: Kaufmann Kohler's Jewish Orientalism and the Construction of Religion in Nineteenth-Century America

This article uses the case of Kaufmann Kohler (1843–1926), an intellectual and institutional leader of American Reform Judaism, to explore the relationship between Orientalism and the category of religion in nineteenth-century America. Recent scholarship has shown that the lived religion of nineteenth-century American Jews departs significantly from the ideological hopes of Jewish elites. Connecting the emerging portrait of nineteenth-century Jewish laity with elite arguments for American Judaism, I reconsider Kohler's thought as a theological project out of step with his socioreligious milieu. Kohler is renowned for his theorizing of Judaism as a universal, ethical religion. As scholars have demonstrated repeatedly, defining Judaism as a “religion” was an important feature of Reform thought. What these accounts have insufficiently theorized, however, is the political context that ties the categorization of religion to the history of Orientalism that organized so many late nineteenth-century discussions of religion, Jewish and not. Drawing on work by Tracy Fessenden, John Modern, and Tisa Wenger, I show that Kohler's universal, cosmopolitan religion is a Jewish version of the Protestant secular. Like these Protestant modernists, Kohler defines Reform Judaism as a religion that supersedes an atavistic tribalism bound to materiality and ritual law. Being Jewish, for Kohler, means being civilized; reforming the soul of Judaism goes together with civilizing Jewish bodies and creating a Judaism that could civilize the world in an era in which religion and imperialism were overlapping interpretive projects with racial and gendered entanglements.

Good Trouble: Post-tenure Interruptions to Our Academic ‘Routines’

For me, in my discipline of Art and Design, and my roles as a professor and civic engagement institutional leader, there is the good work of problem solving that we do and good trouble we create by continually learning to understand and speak the languages of our community partners while sharing our own. Through this sharing, we build social justice exemplars that live into our institutional rhetoric that frequently promises to act in the public good. Not too long ago I walked in a uniform topped by a white conductor’s hat and gloves with a small cadre of willing transportation advocates down the center of Woodward Avenue in Detroit. Three lanes of vehicular traffic on one side heading north, 3 lanes of traffic on the other side heading south, we caused some trouble to the routine traffic as we walked in between the yellow lines, and collectively made a ‘train’ composed of ladders, mop buckets, yellow umbrellas, dry ice, a leaf blower and two shovels. Along the way, our train paused to pick up passengers. This example, I hope, gives some sense of how my work as an artist and designer appears as an interruption. Causing trouble. I believe that my role as a professor of art and design and as an institutional civic engagement leader is to provoke the introspection and questioning that comes with good trouble. The good trouble that we can cause to help interrupt our traditional academic routines and ways of thinking about and doing our teaching and research as community engaged faculty members and administrators. In this piece, I will share some examples of the “trouble” I cause through my work, to help us think more critically and creatively about public interruption as a radical social strategy to bring awareness to and advance change in our communities.

Kirstein, Lincoln Edward (1907–1996)

Lincoln Kirstein was an American impresario, writer, and philanthropist, best known as the patron and champion of choreographer George Balanchine, whom he brought to the United States in 1933. Born in Rochester, New York, Kirstein was raised among the wealthy elite of Boston and graduated from Harvard University. A prolific writer, editor, collector, and fund-raiser, Kirstein was a tireless advocate on behalf of the arts generally, and ballet and dance specifically, in the United States. He was a founding editor of the literary quarterly Hound & Horn and helped to create the organization that became the Museum of Modern Art. With Balanchine, Kirstein founded a series dance companies in the 1930s and 1940s, as well as the School of American Ballet (SAB), culminating in the creation in 1948 of the New York City Ballet (NYCB). He served as Managing Director of the New York City Center, and was a member of the original planning committee for the Lincoln Center. Kirstein was instrumental in securing major philanthropic support from the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations for SAB and NYCB (in addition to other American dance companies), and was a crucial institutional leader of both organizations throughout his life. An astute and wide-ranging collector of art, books, and dance memorabilia, Kirstein’s donations to the MoMA Dance Archives and the New York Public Library’s Jerome Robbins Dance Division constitute some of the most significant archival holdings in America on the history of ballet and dance.

“If I had wanted to put it into words, I would have written a novel”: Ernő Dohnányi as interviewee

Compared to his contemporaries Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály, Ernst von Dohnányi (1877–1960) did not leave an extensive legacy of prose writings. He rarely spoke either of himself, the background of his compositions, his musical principles or compositional aesthetics; nor was he particularly active as a musicologist, ethnomusicologist or critic. Yet, during a long life filled with wide-ranging professional activities, he authored numerous writings pertinent to the history of music and musical life. Equally informative are the interviews he gave in his various capacities as composer, performer, teacher, and institutional leader. A volume in progress, entitled Ernő Dohnányi’s Selected Writings and Interviews, will offer an annotated critical edition of these texts (collected and edited by the author, to be published in late 2019). This study is based on the collected interview-material and gives a summary of some of their most important topics such as Dohnányi’s views on modern music, creative and reproductive talents, live-, radio-, and recorded performances. Though these transcripts cannot always be considered authentic sources, this study attempts to show that there is a great deal of information, heretofore unknown, contained in the numerous new interviews our research has brought to light.

Professional versus family management in Brazilian fashion retail companies: exploring value-investors’ perceptions

Regarding the debate on which sort of management - professional or family administration - would more effectively run businesses, this paper discusses the advantages and shortcomings of family and professional management from a theoretical and a practitioner’s viewpoint. The study aims at contributing to our understanding about the superiority that either type of management might have delivering long-term performance and value creation to shareholders. Six investors from top value investment funds were interviewed regarding the management of seven fashion retail Brazilian companies. Data analysis revealed that investors do not prefer either type of management - family or professional - when they make investments. Instead, they do look for specific characteristics and patterns of behavior in a CEO, which resemble Selznick’s (1957) definition of an institutional leader. Finally, the paper suggests a new path of research for scholars (relating old institutionalism and professionalism) and practical guidelines for each type of management (family or professional), offering, therefore, an academic as well as a practical contribution.

Aristeia Leadership

This chapter will present the second component of the gMp, that is, the Aristeia leadership defined as a continuous act of effectively engaging all members of an organization, or community, as well as utilizing their differences, their authentic energies, creative ideas, and diverse qualities primarily for the benefit of their constituencies. The catalyst for implementing the aforementioned is the institutional leader, who should possess all the necessary skills to support, promote and foster a culture of innovation within the institution. The Aristeia Leadership approach is defined by its three essential components (a) the establishment of an Authentic Leadership Identity (ALI), (b) the creation of a Collective Leadership-Partnership Approach (CPA) and (c) Serving Humanity (Gialamas, Pelonis, & Medeiros, 2014; Gialamas & Avgerinou, 2015).

Evaluasi Diri Perilaku Profesional di Institutsi Sekolah Tinggi Ilmu Kesehatan Guna Bangsa Yogyakarta

Background: Education world has a very important role in improving the quality of human resources, as it is the environment in which the process of the formation of professional behavior through a series of teaching and learning process. Professional behavior should be clearly seen as an aspect of personal identity and character developed over time. Based on this, the focus of professionalism began to shift from individual to the institution and stated that professionalism must be embedded in an educational institution with a complete integration of the culture of professionalism that involves the institution leader, staffs, lecturers, and students. The purpose of this study is to investigate the professional behavior of the institution of Sekolah Tinggi Ilmu Kesehatan Guna Bangsa Yogyakarta. Methods: This study is a descriptive qualitative research. Subjects were the institutional leader, lecturers, staffs and students are determined by purposive sampling. Interview instruments include altruism, honor and integrity, caring and compassion, respect for others, responsibility and accountability, excellence and scholarship, and leadership. Participant at the data collection focused group discussion (FGD) is 10 persons and on interview data collection is 21 persons. Efforts to achieve the credibility of the informant are done by triangulation and discussions with colleagues. Research supervisor role as auditors, maintain dependency and certainty degree of this research. Results: Participants considered that the lecturers, staffs, students and institutional leader have done with the guidance of a good, high integrity, good communication, mutual respect, responsibility and provide exemplary. However, some behavioral components still require improvement such as the level of lecturers’ discipline, staffs’ job and responsibility distribution, student discipline and responsibility, and supervisor leadership patterns. Conclusion: As there are still some components of professional behavior that needs any improvement, requires institutions to increase self-understanding and awareness to professional behavior. Institutions need to consider any strategies to be taken to overcome any problems faced by the institution to achieve professional behavior.

The Dean of Information

The author focuses on the institutional researcher as an institutional leader, over and above providing traditional reporting and support. IR practitioners hold authority over the institution’s data. Leadership and social psychological theory can explain their effectiveness. The author combines effective leadership theory with the Theory of Planned Behavior to produce framework for IR leadership. This framework should help the IR professional be more than a data custodian. It should help the IR professional adopt both a transformative and facilitative leadership stance as needed, in order to help the institution reach its goals.