Category Archives: Advisors

Advisory Council

Advisors, Books

BLACK HISTORY MONTH BOOK REVIEW – by David Grinberg

Elwood Watson “Keepin’ It Real: Essays on Race
in Contemporary America”

 

James Baldwin, the famous 20th century American intellectual, once observed:

“History is the present. We carry our history with us.
To think otherwise is criminal.”

This is an important point to ponder during the annual Black History Month observance during February in the United States. Baldwin was an iconic and outspoken figure of his time who was internationally recognized as a leading voice of the African American experience.

Thus, as Baldwin reminds us posthumously, we should not only focus on trailblazers of centuries past, but also consider more recent history when assessing the state of racial progress.

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Advisors

Action for 2024 On Fossil Fuels – by Sridhar Rangaswamy

Fossil fuel is a term used for non-renewable energy sources like crude oil, natural gas, coal and its related products, petroleum products, etc. These non-renewable energy sources originated from the remains of plants and animals that existed on earth for millions of years.

Several millions of years ago, the pressure and heat from the Earth’s crustal layer decayed and decomposed the organisms into three major forms: coal, natural gas, and oil. The fossil fuel, when burnt releases nitrogen oxide and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This is responsible for degrading and depleting our environment by causing acid rain and smog. It also traps the heat in the troposphere, which in turn causes climate change. It can further destroy and damage the water, land, and our biosphere and eco system.

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DL Opinion columns

Let’s bag the ultra-processed food industry – by Deborah Levine

Originally published in The Chattanooga Times Free Press

If you’re like me and get what seems like 7 million reminders to do things better, you know that this is a self-improvement month .My inbox is full of suggestions for getting in shape, losing weight, eating better …you name it.  Watch the news and you’ll see reporters give tips on what diets to follow to help you live longer and healthier. Ironically, those reports are interspersed with ads for the Ultra-processed food” (UPF) you’re being told to avoid. The processed food industry is spending big bucks to promote their UPF yummies containing high levels of saturated fat, salt and sugar. Having learned long ago that UPFs contributes to my chronic inflammation, I’m determined to counteract the 14 billions of dollars spent annually marketing this crap.

Did you know that about 73% of our country’s food supply is ultra-processed and are about 52% cheaper than less processed alternatives. Further, of all the advertisements related to food or drink, almost 80 % were junk food ads. We’re being played!

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Advisors, Authors A-H, Race & Ethnicity

“Mrs. Good Trouble”: Amelia Boynton Robinson – by Terry Howard

Some people are just made to cause, as the late Congressman John Lewis called it, “good trouble.” They’re contrarian by nature. It’s in their DNA. It ignites their fury. It explains their courage to put life and limb at risk for what they believe in.

Which brings us to African American History Month 2024 and to “Mrs. Good Trouble” herself, the late civil rights pioneer Amelia Boynton Robinson, inarguably the matriarch of the voting rights movement. Now if you subscribe to that familiar saying, “behind every great man is a woman,” then I’ll say, “behind every great movement is a woman.” Many of them in fact.

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Advisors, Trends 2024: Divisive World

2024 Trends, Predictions, Actions We Must Take – by Mauricio Velásquez.

2024 is going to be a very tumultuous year.  It is an election year, divisiveness, hate, polarized manipulation will be the name of the game.  Pitting people, groups against each other will be attempted, fight these forces.  Take the high road – call for calm, unity, understanding, and Peace.

As a global backdrop, a constant reminder of division and hate – Ukraine-Russia, and the Israel-Hamas wars will be a contributing factor in the churning of hate.  Hate opportunists will take advantage of these wars as a backdrop to foment division, suspicion, and outright hate and violence.  Watch the hate on social media and call it out.  I am constantly “Calling for Respect, Dignity, Understanding for All.”

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Advisors

Diversity & Speech Part 43: How 3 College Presidents Flunked Their Speech Midterm Exam – by Carlos Cortés

Since Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, the world has been convulsed by the carnage emanating from the Middle East.  That convulsion has migrated to the United States, where it is expressed daily in protests, demands, threats, and moral-grandstanding often reeking of dehumanizing language. 

The carnage has claimed the lives of thousands in Gaza and Israel.  It has also claimed other kinds of victims in the United States.   This includes three college presidents, whose December 5, 2023, testimony before the Education and Workforce Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives brought them instant public infamy because of the way that they positioned themselves in regard to speech. 

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Advisors, Authors A-H, Authors I-Q, Race & Ethnicity

Jewish Allies in African-American History – by Terry Howard

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Dr. Martin L. King, Jr., Rosa Parks, Medgar Evers and Fannie Lou Hamer are some of the many leaders who paved the way through the rocky history of the Civil Rights movement in the United States. But the movement would not have succeeded without the contributions of people from all races, among them philanthropist Julius P. Rosenwald, whose name is associated with hundreds of schools for Black students throughout the south.

But first, we should remember the many largely unreported Black/Jewish American partnerships in that history. Case in point is the relationship between Dr. King and close friend and advisor Stanley Levinson, a Jewish American.

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Academic Articles, Advisors, Authors A-H, Religious Diversity

DEI, Religion, and Hate Crimes – by Deborah Ashton, Ph.D.

Introduction

Deborah Levine requested that I join her group on Black and Jewish Dialogue in 2021. Given today’s atmosphere, dialogue is crucial. Levine is the editor-in-chief of the American Diversity Report (ADR). She is a Holocaust documentarian (Courter, 2023; Levine, Untold Stories of a World War II Liberator, 2023), whom I am sure when she launched ADR never anticipated that diversity and DEI would be equated with anti-Semitism. Yet the cry has been aimed at academia and business (Cohen, 2023; Notheis, 2024) I am baffled by the cry to silence and dismantle DEI. 

Through my DEI journey and practice since 1991 in corporate America, DEI has been inclusive and provides respect and dignity to all across religion, race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, physical and mental ability, and other demographics. I will provide some examples later in the article.

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Advisors, Authors A-H

The Power of Words: the “said” and the “unsaid” – by Terry Howard

I came across the following quote in the Writers & Poets magazine recently:
                               “Where words prevail not, violence prevails.”

Please pause and sit on that one momentarily. In case you’re wondering, it’s a phrase from Thomas Kyd, a playwright and contemporary of William Shakespeare.

I then squared that quote against another familiar one, “words have power,” meaning that words have energy and power with the ability to help, motivate, demotivate, heal, harm, humiliate and devastate.

With all that said, I also thought about the title of this narrative and its message about the undeniable power of words within the context of the dangers of silence and how silence is sometimes complicit in the spread of hate and violence.

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