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About the American Diversity Report

DL Opinion columns

Grateful for generations of do-gooders – by Deborah Levine

originally published in The Chattanooga Times Free Press

Chattanooga’s Jewish history is a product of many generations. The Mizpah Congregation synagogue is definitely part of that history. It was built in the mid-1800s by Adolph Ochs who bought The Chattanooga Times and later purchased and developed The New York Times. You may remember Ochs’ granddaughter, Ruth Holmburg. As publisher of The Chattanooga Times, she took positions supporting the civil rights movement and against government corruption and environmental pollution. The Ochs family has been greatly influence, and they’re not alone.

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DL Opinion columns

Corruption weaponized with tax dollars – by Deborah Levine

 Originally published in The Chattanooga Times Free Press

Trump’s proposed Anti-Weaponization Fund of $1.776 dollars is shaking up a lot of folks. Reports of corruption that would have been denied or minimized are now dramatically public including: 1) Insider Trading: Trump made money from stocks whose prices were affected by his influence, 2) Immunity: The Internal Revenue Service won’t  scrutinize any past or present alleged tax irregularities by the president and his family. 3) Bribery: The Food and Drug Administration allow flavored e-cigarettes after a $5 million PAC (Political Action Committee) tobacco company donation. What accounts for this visibility? It’s that Anti-Weaponization Fund using our tax dollars.  

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DL Opinion columns

Instruct and Inspire – by Deborah Levine

Originally published in The Chattanooga Times Free Press

The drive from Chattanooga to the Nashville area is a long haul. I wasn’t looking forward to the more almost 5 hour round trip in the car as I prepared to speak at an Interfaith Conference sponsored by the TN Holocaust Commission. Fortunately, a friend offered to drive and I ended up loving the trip for its incredible beauty. I’ve always felt a spiritual presence in trees and there we were surrounded by plenty of them. It’s always emotionally difficult speaking about my dad, a World War II Liberator, but I could feel his spirit encouraging me. I was reminded that I’d been invited to speak about dad’s legacy for good reason. So by the time we arrived at the conference location in Hermitage, the Emanuel Lutheran Church, I was ready to do my presentation, “Lessons of a Liberator Assigned to Interrogate Nazi POWs”. 

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Authors A-H, Books

When the Infinite Becomes a Circle – by Meena Chopra

 Reflections from a Mahā Kumbh Discussion

(Seeking The Infinite: A Spiritual Journey through the *Maha Kumbh)

Meena At the Gala Opening Event of the 2nd edition of Canada Literature Festival in Mississauga on 14th May, there was a discussion on USA-based Yakub Matthew’s newly published book Seeking the Infinite. It was convened by UK-based noted literary thinker Prabhu Guptara, where I found myself entering not merely a literary conversation, but a strangely layered inner journey. The subject itself, the infinite, already carries a destabilizing quality. It invites thought, yet resists containment within thought. And perhaps that was precisely what made the experience of the discussion both engaging and quietly unsettling.

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DL Opinion columns, Tech & AI

Conversational AI comes to Chattanooga, again – by Deborah Levine

originally published in The Chattanooga Times Free Press

Project Voice 2026 marks a decade of Conversational AI and it was a pleasure to attend at its conference at the Chattanooga Convention Center. I’m in total agreement with the organizer, Bradley Metrock, (General Partner, Project Voice Capital Partners) and his explanation of the celebration. “We’ve been very pleased to host Project Voice for the last ten years here in Chattanooga. Every time I get asked “Why Chattanooga?” I respond “Why not?” The city is growing, vibrant, and hungry, and those working with voice AI and conversational AI from around the world that have attended over the years have witnessed that energy first-hand. The conference itself moves the voice AI world forward, and quietly has established a reputation as a central event for this young but growing technological domain.”

There were more than 160 attendees for amazing sessions like: Alexa, What’s Next For Voice AI?, Security Reimagined in an Age of AI, Hiring In The Age Of AI, Conversational AI in Modern Healthcare, and Measuring AI’s Effectiveness in Customer Service.

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Academic Articles, Authors I-Q, Politics

A Value-Based Peace Proposal for the Middle East – by W. Julian Korab-Karpowicz

The New Israel and the New Palestine

“The world is the totality of values, rather than the totality of facts.”
— Tractatus Politico-Philosophicus, 7.2021

Modern diplomacy consistently fails in the Middle East because it treats the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a zero-sum collision of physical facts, borders, and raw power politics. This paper (Korab-Karpowicz 2026a) operationalizes the evolutionary axiology of the Tractatus Politico-Philosophicus to present a structural, value-based alternative.

By rejecting the Hobbesian trap of mechanically dividing the contested territory of the West Bank, I propose a grand geopolitical exchange: the complete integration of the West Bank into Israel to ensure its strategic and historical security, balanced by the creation of “The New Palestine”—a sovereign, world-class hyper-developed state encompassing the Gaza Strip and an expanded territory in the Sinai Peninsula, funded entirely by the international community.

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DL Opinion columns

These women are making history around the world – by Deborah Levine

originally published in The Chattanooga Times Free Press

When I got the invitation from the annual virtual Women’s Empowerment Expo to be featured among the 40 organizations from around the world, I thought it was a joke. Maybe that’s because the Expo is organized by Harvard Alumni for Global Women’s Empowerment (GlobalWE) and includes CEOs, ambassadors, inventors, I’ve always addressed the challenges that women face, my Radcliffe/Harvard time was more than a half century ago. Overwhelmed by their incredible attempts to build a better world, I’ll let others from the Zoom conference comment.

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Authors A-H, War

Middle East Part 1: Ancient Wisdom for a World at War -by Chaim Goldberg

A Single Verse, A Complete Moral Vision

In the book of Leviticus, a short commandment appears: “Do not place a stumbling block before the blind.”

On the surface, it is simple: don’t trip someone who cannot see. But Jewish legal tradition has understood this verse for centuries as something far larger — a comprehensive moral principle about knowledge, power, and responsibility.

The blind person in this verse is never the one at fault. He is the vulnerable party — the one who lacks information, lacks sight, lacks the ability to protect himself. The prohibition is directed entirely at the one who can see — and chooses nonetheless to place an obstacle in his path.

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Authors A-H, War

Middle East Part 3: Why the American Chassis Doesn’t Fit the Israeli Soul – by Chaim Goldberg

A Meeting That Left Me With Questions

I did not expect the conversation to stay with me the way it did.

I sat with Jonathan Pollard in Jerusalem — a sharp, vital man, the kind you leave with more questions than you arrived with. The meeting was genuinely enriching. And at the same time, something in it placed before me a question I cannot put down:

Not a question about what he did, or what was done to him.

An architectural question.

What does it mean to live inside two states that are not the same kind of thing?

Because Pollard did not inhabit two countries. He inhabited two systems of reality — ones that sometimes use the same words and mean entirely different things. And under pressure, for one terrible moment, the structure cracked.

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Authors A-H, War

Middle East Part 2: Between the Illusion of Death and the Engineering of Life – by Chaim Goldberg

I read the word three times before I understood it wasn’t a translation error.

“The subject demonstrated resistance… focused physical force was applied… she was later found without signs of life.”

The subject. That’s how she was described in the internal report of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards on Nika Shakarami, as exposed by BBC Persian. A sixteen-year-old girl who had gone out to protest the death of Mahsa Amini. A girl the same age as my granddaughter. The same age as the students who stood in front of me in the classroom for thirty years.

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