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About the American Diversity Report

About Deborah Levine, Books, Levine articles

Books for Peace International Award Ambassador 2022

Deborah Levine:
Books for peaceSilver Ambassador for Culture

Editor-in-Chief Deborah Levine of the American Diversity Report has now been named Silver Ambassador as a  humanitarian supporter for promoting culture of the Books for Peace International Award.

Dear Noblewoman Ms. Levine,
I feel embarrassed to write to you because our small prize can never be as great as your culture, as your immense soul, as your immense heart, as your wonderful and immense literary capacity.

You enclose the essence of the Woman, the Friend, the Artist, the Poetess, the Woman of today with the ethical and moral values of other times.  You are a unique woman.

THANK YOU FOR EXISTING, thank you for accepting our recognition.

With affection, esteem and gratitude,

Prof. Antonio Imeneo
DIRECTOR UNIFUNVIC EU- (BFUCA UNESCO BRASIL) CEO International Research Center Sport Prevention / Founder BOOKS for PEACE International Award
________________________ Continue reading Books for Peace International Award Ambassador 2022 →

Authors I-Q, Trends 2022

Roll the Dice in 2022 with the MaEGAts – by Martin Kimeldorf

What will 2022 be like? Let’s do some time travel to see how the intersection of future and past events will shape us. It’s now the year 2142 and the original MAGA banner has a new spelling: MaEGA. Using an imperfect 40-year cycle, the MaEGAts (as the followers are known) look at 2022 by tracing their origins back two centuries to the 1880s.

The MaEGA followers possess a dark humor born out of the many imperfections they often deny. Their manifestos and guidelines were written with disappearing ink, because they knew their ideas would not last. They were most often united in chuckling quietly at their own serious intent. They relied on distracting others with their racist rants and misogynist jokes. Turns out, their roots go back much farther in US history.

Continue reading Roll the Dice in 2022 with the MaEGAts – by Martin Kimeldorf →

Authors A-H, Inclusion, Trends 2022

Diversity and Speech No. 26: Trends in Student Speech – by Carlos E. Cortés, Steven Petkas

A Co-Authored Interview

Carlos: Steve, now that you’ve retired as Associate Director of Residence Life at the University of Maryland, College Park, I would love to get your thoughts about the changing nature of student speech.  In the twenty-five years that I worked with your department, I saw many changes.

Steve: You’re right.  The two of us certainly had fun designing our Common Ground program back in the 1990s.  That program would bring together diverse groups of students – sometimes more than a dozen – to discuss current equity dilemmas.  A series of four, 90-minute dialogue sessions, all framed around a single provocative question.  Should laws governing abortion be changed?  Should universities use intentional methods to diversify their student populations?  Rousing and illuminating conversations.

Continue reading Diversity and Speech No. 26: Trends in Student Speech – by Carlos E. Cortés, Steven Petkas →

DL Opinion columns

Giving thanks, and respect – by Deborah Levine

Originally published  in The Chattanooga Times Free Press

Thanksgiving is traditionally a time for families to gather together and eat their heads off. Many are unaware that November is Native American Month or they commemorate it with the usual “pilgrims and Indians” stories that celebrate the generosity of the Wampanoag people to the first settlers. They bypass the genocide of the Wampanoag that followed, and the removal of Native Americans from their lands. The invisibility has allowed ignorance of their history and land for many folks.

Continue reading Giving thanks, and respect – by Deborah Levine →

Authors A-H, Religious Diversity

Entrepreneurship as a Black Humanist – by Ken Granderson

My name is Ken Granderson. I was born in New York City in 1963, and grew up in a blue-collar household. Like most Black Americans, I grew up in a religious background surrounded by both very religious and very sincere adults.

I have no negative experiences to speak of from my days growing up in the church. The church I attended tended was very moderate and the biggest thing that we kids had to worry about was strict older church ladies.

And it is safe to say that I’ve been a Humanist my entire life – long before I ever learned the word.

Continue reading Entrepreneurship as a Black Humanist – by Ken Granderson →

Authors A-H, Religious Diversity

Diversity and Speech #25: Growing Up Bi-Religious – by Carlos E. Cortés

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 Many diversity trainers tell me that they steer clear of religion.  Not me.  Faith discussions are always welcome in my workshops. I love talking about religion. Maybe that’s because of how I grew up.

ChurchSome people are reared in a strong religious tradition. Others with none. I grew up in a home with two faith traditions. To this day that experience affects the way I view the world around me.

shofar
Rams’ Horn – Shofar

Consider the opening lines of my memoir, Rose Hill: An Intermarriage before Its Time.  “Dad was a Mexican Catholic.  Mom was a Kansas City-born Jew with Eastern European immigrant parents. They fell in love in Berkeley, California, and married in Kansas City, Missouri.  That alone would not have been a big deal. But it happened in 1933, when such marriages were rare. And my parents spent most of their lives in Kansas City, a place both racially segregated and religiously divided.  Mom and Dad chose to be way ahead of their time; I didn’t.  But because of them, I had to be. My mixed background meant that, however unwillingly, I had to learn to live as an outsider.”

Continue reading Diversity and Speech #25: Growing Up Bi-Religious – by Carlos E. Cortés →

Authors I-Q, Culture

The Gift of a Magic 17-Digit Ball – by Martin Kimeldorf

In my leisure wellness book (and workshop) Serious Play I shared my observation that too many people forget how to play. And to drive the point home I shared my personal motto Play Now or Pay Later. Toys enrich our experience across a lifetime. I also believe that if you want to measure a person, look at the “toys” they collect. One toy I dearly treasure is the Magic 8-Ball and now I see its relevance expanded to 17 digits.

The notion that everyone has a unique magic 17-digit number associated with their being came from last night’s early-autumn dream. Perhaps this was in anticipation of the toy-giving season looming just ahead. The dream did not explain how the 17-digit number was generated. It does appear, though, to have been based on the original 8-Ball fortune-telling toy, originally designed by Albert C. Carter and Abe Bookman in 1946 for the Mattel toy company. Back then, the popular 8-Ball toy supposedly possessed clairvoyant powers. Owners used it like a personal crystal ball. In that long ago holiday season it became a fad, a must-have toy for children 7 to 70.

Continue reading The Gift of a Magic 17-Digit Ball – by Martin Kimeldorf →

DL Opinion columns

Our climate crisis is now – by Deborah Levine

originally published in The Chattanooga Times Free Press 

Looking to the Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Scotland, Britain’s Queen Elizabeth was overheard referring to the global all-talk and no-action as “irritating”. I grew up with British understatements so I knew that meant total disgust mixed with a few expletives. The Queen was irritated by folks who don’t walk-the-talk and was probably left speechless by how many American leaders gloss over our growing climate crisis.
Continue reading Our climate crisis is now – by Deborah Levine →

DL Opinion columns

Second thoughts on banning books – by Deborah Levine

 (originally published as an opinion column for The  Chattanooga Times Free Press) 

The banning of books has been around for centuries and America is no exception. We have banned books like To Kill a Mockingbird and Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. We banned 273 books in 2020 with more to come. But don’t the recent controversies over school library books seem a bit irrelevant to you? After all, we’re online 24/7 and the influence of books seems pitifully modest. Unless authors have a huge following on Tik Tok and Twitter, students are unlikely to storm classroom libraries. So why the brouhaha?

Continue reading Second thoughts on banning books – by Deborah Levine →