Projects that are making a difference, improving lives, and building communities.
On March 7, 2024 we celebrated Women’s History Month with a panel of Women Groundbreakers whose work locally and globally serving diverse communities will Inspire & Instruct. Facilitated by Deborah Levine and sponsored by the American Diversity Report and G100 Women Leaders, the panel shared their expertise and experience. CLICK to hear their WUTC interviews.
Continue reading Women GroundBreakers Storytelling: Serving Diverse Communities
“Some voters are burned out on outrage!”
That’s the recent headline in a national publication. That outrage? The eyebrow raising rancor, silliness and general awfulness surrounding the upcoming presidential election.
And the truth is that if we strike out the first four letters in the word “outrage” what’s left are three letters many voters are particularly burned out on…. age…as in President Joe Biden’s age! Count yours truly among them. Shucks, if I had a dollar for every time Biden’s age is cited in the news, I could purchase a luxurious mansion in Miami, Malibu (or, eh, Mar-a-Lago).
Continue reading Why not a “Sully” Sullenberger for President? – by Terry Howard
Don’t you love being right? I sure do. I think that’s one reason most of us are afflicted with what’s called “confirmation bias” – the pesky habit of noticing only the evidence that proves our previously held beliefs correct. In other words, we see what we expect to see.
This is where our biases – our inflexible beliefs about categories of people – trick us into jumping to the wrong conclusions. Once we get it into our heads that members of particular groups “all” – because they are members of that group – share a particular characteristic, our brain just can’t resist proving that bias right.
Continue reading Overcoming Bias: A Guide to Skilled Skepticism – by Sondra Thiederman
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.
Continue reading “Mrs. Good Trouble”: Amelia Boynton Robinson – by Terry Howard
The Nineteen Sixties promised a new chapter in US history, with the election of a young charismatic President, John F. Kennedy. However, the perfect storm of the Vietnam War, multiple assassinations (JFK, RFK, MLK, MX), the Cuban missile crisis, and continued segregation in the South, turned it into an extremely turbulent decade. Taken together, the failures of the Reconstruction (1865–77), Brown v Board of Education (1954), and President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, shattered America’s self-image as “The City Upon A Hill”, destroyed faith in the political system, and forced the nation to question its foundational assumptions.
Continue reading Civil Rights: A Most Righteous Hangover – by Ashok Panikkar
This Teaching Guide accompanies the documentary: Untold, Stories of a Word War II Liberator. The Guide includes excerpts from the documentary’s letters as well as discussion questions for students and additional resources. It also includes section on the Nuremberg Trials and on newspaper journalists accounts of Holocaust death camps.
“Untold: Stories of a World War II Liberator proves that there are always new truths to learn and new heroes to celebrate when studying the horrors of the Holocaust. This work is arriving at a critical time; as the voices of survivors and liberators pass, those who teach history are confronted with increasingly loud cries of distortion and denial. A resource such as Untold allows students to both learn about and humanize the Holocaust.”
~ Dr. Rich Quinlan: Director, Holocaust and Genocide Education Center
Chair, History Dept./Saint Elizabeth University
“Deborah Levine’s work continues to be of utmost importance for students of all ages. The specific story of ‘UNTOLD’ must be told today and forever, so that the words ‘Never Again’ never lose their meaning!”
~ Avi Hoffman: CEO, Yiddishkayt Initiative, Inc.
“Many liberators such as Levine’s father kept their experience largely secret So the publication is an important resource for Holocaust education and research…and a very readable introduction to the journey of the Jewish community over the past century”
~ The Rev. Dr. John T.Pawlikowski: Founding member of the US Holocaust Center, Prof of Social Ethics/Catholic Theological Union
Note: Also available are Deborah Levine’s memoirs: The Liberator’s Daughter and The Magic Marble Tree, upon which the documentary is based. They include the wartime letters with eye witness accounts.
The Geo-strategic Premise of Environmental Espionage – Abstract
In current times with the rise in environmental crises like global warming, deforestation, and wildfires in the geopolitical scenario, it becomes imperative to collaborate and cooperate with other nations to find solutions to such crises at the global level. However, with every nation’s ulterior motive being involved, sharing environment or resource-related information can prove to be hazardous for the various nations and states especially in the international sphere.
The larger relationship between environment-related information, global partnership, and the possibility of espionage then becomes intertwined. Moreover, this delicate intertwining of these seamlessly connected dynamics of international relations, yet the divergently different motives with which each nation-state might be cooperating highlights the transition in international relations, the changing nature of espionage and the need to keep pace with these spaces.
Despite its overwhelming success, Obamacare remains the target of relentless partisan attacks. Donald Trump is again vowing to end the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, during a potential second term as president.
“Obamacare is a catastrophe,” Trump recently said at a campaign event in Iowa. The twice impeached former president also wrote on his social media platform: “The cost of Obamacare is out of control, plus, it’s not good Healthcare.”
But terminating Obamacare, assuming Trump wins the presidency again, would decimate healthcare for about 40 million Americans for no good reason. These citizens in need of affordable healthcare had been locked out of the private insurance system for decades based on discriminatory reasons — including socioeconomic status and preexisting conditions, which disproportionately hurt minority groups the most.
Continue reading 2024 Trends: Healthcare at Risk – by David Grinberg
This article was originally published in Beyond Intractability
The only reasonable prediction we can make about the 21st century is that we don’t know what’s coming our way — except that it will be bad.
While triggered by the Israel/Palestine situation, this article is a critical reflection on the role of ‘peacebuilding’ (my umbrella term for all non-adversarial dispute resolution processes) in the 21st century.
To understand why the peacebuilding field has failed to live up to its lofty ambitions, we have to unpack the world we inhabit today. After the heady optimism at the end of the Cold War, the conflicts of the new century have forced Westerners to rethink their short-lived assumptions about abolishing war, making the world safe for democracy and capitalism, and world peace. Hence, I won’t give you a two-point off-ramp for Russia, a five-point plan for the Syrian embroglio, or a seven-point approach for the Israel-Palestine mess. Of course, we should try to make the world safer. However, our attempts should be rooted in hard-nosed realities, not skewered by wishful thinking.
Continue reading Peacebuilding: Growing Strawberries on Coconut Trees – by Ashok Panikkar
America again pauses to honor the monumental life and legacy of civil rights icon, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK). The annual MLK Day national holiday is an opportune time to ponder some of Dr. King’s timeless words of wisdom and their immense influence on the nation more than half a century later.
Like other giants of American history, MLK showed that great leadership begets great communication (among many other things). His powerful message about the critical importance of racial justice, equal opportunity and economic empowerment connected with diverse demographics of every race, gender, age, color and creed across the country.
Continue reading Honoring MLK Words of Wisdom – by David Grinberg