Category Archives: About Deborah Levine

About ADR Editor-in-Chief

About Deborah Levine

ADR Management Consulting Award

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Deborah Levine and the American Diversity Report Receives 2020 Chattanooga Award

CHATTANOOGA March 11, 2020 — Deborah Levine has been selected for the 2020 Chattanooga Award in the Management Consulting Services category by the Chattanooga Award Program.

Each year, the Chattanooga Award Program identifies companies that we believe have achieved exceptional marketing success in their local community and business category. These are local companies that enhance the positive image of small business through service to their customers and our community. These exceptional companies help make the Chattanooga area a great place to live, work and play.

Various sources of information were gathered and analyzed to choose the winners in each category. The 2020 Chattanooga Award Program focuses on quality, not quantity. Winners are determined based on the information gathered both internally by the Chattanooga Award Program and data provided by third parties.

About Chattanooga Award Program

The Chattanooga Award Program is an annual awards program honoring the achievements and accomplishments of local businesses throughout the Chattanooga area. Recognition is given to those companies that have shown the ability to use their best practices and implemented programs to generate competitive advantages and long-term value.

The Chattanooga Award Program was established to recognize the best of local businesses in our community. Our organization works exclusively with local business owners, trade groups, professional associations and other business advertising and marketing groups. Our mission is to recognize the small business community’s contributions to the U.S. economy.

Newspaper Opinion Columns

‘Tis the Season of Love, but the Era of Hate – by Deborah Levine

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Originally published in The Chattanooga Times Free Press

This time of year should be all about kindness, generosity, and, of course, love. But there’s precious little love in the air these days. Whether watching the news, looking at Face Book, or checking out Twitter, what we see is the glorification of snark. Insults, meanness, threats, and derogatory language permeate every thread of our society’s fabric. We are at war with each other and love is hard to come by. So I resorted to love expressed in a different era, in a different war.   

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Newspaper Opinion Columns

Hate: Everything old is new again – by Deborah Levine

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Originally published in The Chattanooga Times Free Press

DEBORAH LEVINEThe United Nations designated International Holocaust Remembrance Day, commemorated this week, to remember the six million Jewish victims and millions of other victims of the Holocaust. This Day marks the anniversary of the 1945 liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, a set of work-death camps in Nazi-occupied Poland. The hope is to confront hatred and make sure that we do not forget, ignore, or stay silent on the lessons of this history.

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Newspaper Opinion Columns

Ladies Night’s New Decade – by Deborah Levine

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It’s 2020 and there’s a lot of buzz about stand-out stories of the last decade. One of my favorites is the proposed replacement of the statue of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest with one of Country Music’s Dolly Parton. The suggestion is a piece of genius! Let’s go from the sombre debate over Forrest’s dark background as a KKK founding member to Dolly, Tennessee’s music icon who makes you want to break out into a chorus of “Rocky Top”.   Who better to represent our state capital than the creator of Dollywood, beloved by the entire country?

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Newspaper Opinion Columns

Swastikas and nooses: campus hate speech or free speech? – by Deborah Levine

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Originally published in The Chattanooga Times Free Press

DEBORAH LEVINENever heard of UHBIOC? Think again. The initials stand for Uncivil, Hate and Bias Incidents on Campus (UHBIOC) and rarely a week goes by without an incident on campuses. CNN reported 5 incidents in just one week with swastikas and nooses on campuses in Georgia, Wisconsin, Alabama, New York, and Iowa. Now the big question for colleges is whether swastikas and nooses legally represents hate speech or free speech.

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Newspaper Opinion Columns

Mother Nature’s daughters are cleaning up – by Deborah Levine

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Originally published in The Chattanooga Times Free Press

We all understand the retail exhaustion of this season, but did the driver of a random car passing by have to toss his empty soda can onto my front lawn? And we all know that the cleaner upper isn’t the driver, it’s me. I’m reminded of a road sign featured online that asks the question, “Why are you littering?” We get several choices for an answer: 1) I’m a Jerk, 2) I don’t care about anyone else, 3) Mommy still cleans up after me, and 4) All of the above. So when 16-year old Greta Thunberg became Time Magazine’s Person of the Year,  maybe Mommy Earth sent her kid with a message, one that’s beyond seasonal.

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Newspaper Opinion Columns

Reporting and counteracting hate is everybody’s job- by Deborah Levine

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Originally published in The Chattanooga Times Free Press 

Reporters haven’t lacked for stories about hate groups and lone wolves whether it’s Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue, Milwaukee’s acid attack on a Latino, Dallas’ shooting of a transgender woman, or El Paso’s Walmart massacre. So I was surprised to see journalist from around the region looking relaxed and hanging out together at an event convened by Chattanooga’s Council Against Hate, Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) Lookout, and sponsor BlueCross BlueShield of TN. I expected them to look stoic and even jaded given the thick skins they’ve had to develop. But the passion for their work was awesome and so was their excitement about doing research undercover.

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Newspaper Opinion Columns

Don’t Underestimate Putin’s Threat – by Deborah Levine

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Originally published in The Chattanooga Times Free Press

Ukrainian-born Comedian Yakov Smirnoff jokingly said Russia’s secret police, the KGB, stood for Kiss Goodbye Your Butt. That was decades before another comedian, Volodymyr Zelensky, became Ukraine’s president. But Zelensky knows there’s nothing funny about Russia’s annexation of the eastern part of his country. Fortunately, we have helped guard against further Russian encroachment. So what was Trump thinking in using our aid as a pawn in this political chess game?

The Russians have never been muted in their aggressive global reach. From Vietnam to Cuba, the United States and the former Soviet Union wrestled in a Cold War. As the Soviet Union, Russian invasions included Poland, Ukraine, Latvia and what became the communist republic of Eastern Germany. A relentless dictatorship from czarist times to the present, the number of people who tried to escape Russian rule are legendary.

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Newspaper Opinion Columns

We’re lost in space – by Deborah Levine

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(originally published in The Chattanooga Times Free Press)

DEBORAH LEVINEWhat should I write about in these incredibly tumultuous times? It’s impossible to keep up with the Ukraine details. Then there’s asking China to investigate the Bidens when Donald Trump Jr. developed luxury condos in Indonesia with millions in cash from a China-owned construction business. And Reuters reports that Ivanka Trump’s Chinese trademarks include voting machines. How do we handle the just-joking defense, not to mention the bullying, denials, distractions, and denunciations? Despite everything, the reality will emerge. It will become a question of severity. Is this an impeachable offense or inappropriate behavior? My answer is yes to both. So now what?

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Neuro-diversity, Newspaper Opinion Columns

All is not lost – by Deborah Levine

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Originally published in The Chattanooga Times Free Press

DEBORAH LEVINEIn a month where there seems no end to disasters, scandals, and threats, I celebrated my birthday looking for a ray of hope. Can a whiff of integrity emerge from a whistle blower’s urgent concerns that apparently link our president, the Ukraine, and extortion? Will our faith in leadership mean that floods and fires aren’t our nation’s future.  Maybe, we’ll even have the courage to control mass shootings. Alternating between holding my breath and large noisy sighs, my hubby and I went off to the movies for a bit of escapism. Who knew that the ray of hope would show up with the popcorn.

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