American Citizenship Research Articles

Liberalism and the Articulation of Cruelty: An Essay on Judith Shklar and D. M. Thomas

The writings of the late Judith Shklar (1929-92) are at the center of a "considerable reinvigoration of the liberal political imagination" in the last twenty years. So writes the distinguished political theorist Bernard Yack in his introduction to a collection of essays written in honor of Shklar, published in 1996 under the title Liberalism without Illusions. The sixteen contributors to this collection include the most influential political theorists and historians of liberalism, such as Michael Walzer, Rogers M. Smith, Quentin Skinner, and Bruce Ackerman, to name a few. All the contributors acknowledge the influence of some aspect of Shklar's analysis of the development of liberalism. Shklar's work ranges over all the essential phases of liberal thought: the question of tolerance brought on by the religious wars of the seventeenth century; equal justice for citizens in the creation of modern republics and constitutional democracies; and the challenges of big government and military force in the minds of liberals who are faced with totalitarian regimes during the Cold War era. In the fields of political philosophy and intellectual history, she has written authoritative studies on Montesquieu, Rousseau, American citizenship, and the problem of legalism. Her distinctive treatment of liberalism's concern with the freedom and dignity of the individual culminates in an original definition of the core of liberal doctrine based in a fundamental protection from fear, cruelty, and pain, what she terms the "liberalism of fear." 1 Her work links the broadly political concerns of classic liberalism--constitutional rights, a focus on the individual as the center of political discourse, a concern with personal development and welfare--to a detailed analysis of liberalism's gradual transformation of traditional concepts of virtue and vice into new moral concerns with betrayal, misanthropy, hypocrisy, and cruelty. This new set of moral concerns, or "ordinary vices" as Shklar [End Page 465] calls them, follows liberalism's success in founding civil society upon the concepts of individual autonomy, tolerance, and freedom from persecution for one's religion or race. 2

American Compact: James Madison and the Problem of Founding

For students of the early American republic, James Madison has long been something of a riddle, the member of the founding generation whose actions and thought most stubbornly resist easy summary. The staunchest of Federalists in the 1780s, Madison would turn on his former allies shortly thereafter, renouncing their expansive nationalism as a threat to the Constitution and to popular government. In a study that combines penetrating textual analysis with deep historical awareness, Gary Rosen stakes out important new ground by showing the philosophical consistency in Madison's long and controversial public life. The key, he argues, is Madison's profound originality as a student of the social compact, the venerable liberal idea into which he introduced several novel, and seemingly illiberal, principles. Foremost among these was the need for founding to be the work of an elite few. For Madison, prior accounts of the social compact, in their eagerness to establish the proper ends of government, provided a hopelessly naive account of its origin. he saw it, the Federal Convention of 1787 was an opportunity for those of outstanding prudence (understood in its fullest Aristotelian sense) to do for the people what they could not do for themselves. This troublesome reliance on the few was balanced, Rosen contends, by Madison's commitment to republicanism as an end in itself, a conclusion that he likewise drew from the social compact, accommodating the proud political claims that his philosophical predecessors had failed to recognize. Rosen goes on to show how Madison's idiosyncratic understanding of the social compact illuminates his differences not only with Hamilton but with Jefferson as well. Both men, Madison feared, were too ready to resort to original principles in coming to terms with the Constitution, putting at risk the fragile achievement of the founding in their determination to invoke, respectively, the claims of the few and the many. As American Compact persuasively concludes, Madison's ideas on the origin and aims of the Constitution are not just of historical interest. They carry crucial lessons for our own day, and speak directly to current disputes over diversity, constitutional interpretation, the fate of federalism, and the possibilities and limits of American citizenship.

Group rights: reconciling equality and difference

As people of diverse origins seek their rights as citizens in the great American melting pot, the differences between us are sometimes celebrated but more often cursed. White Americans, too often forgetful of their own immigrant backgrounds, question whether initiatives like affirmative action that extend privileges to minorities violate the principle of equal treatment under the law. In this provocative book, David Ingram brings a variety of current social dilemmas together in a mutually illuminating way. He examines the concept of legal equality in a multiracial society by considering issues such as self-governance for Native Americans, the rights of immigrants, affirmative action, racial redistricting, and multicultural curricular reform. He also tackles the problem of social injustice in a global setting by assessing the negative impact of free trade policies on the rights of groups to subsistence, self-determination, and cultural integrity. Ingram steeps his presentation in theoretical discussions that investigate group versus individual rights, oppressed groups and social injustice, and the legitimacy of racial and cultural distinctions. He explores the legal treatment of difference to show how democratic institutions unintentionally perpetuate racial inequality and to determine how those institutions might be better structured to protect minorities. Taking in a broad sweep of economics, politics, and anthropology, Ingram examines social ideals in the light of historical facts in order to lend a concrete perspective to possibilities for reform. He makes a persuasive case for redressing wrongs of the past in a way that adheres to the principle of legal equality arguing that initiatives like affirmative active are not reverse discrimination but satisfy the constitutional guarantee of equal protection and he suggests that libertarians need to acknowledge duties as much as they do rights. Group Rights is a new primer on the meaning of American citizenship. It makes a vital contribution to critical social theory, bringing complex philosophical concepts into sharp focus and elaborating the histories by which moral and political principles are interpreted. A challenging sourcebook for students and concerned citizens, it clarifies these important issues and points the way toward a political reconciliation between equality and difference in the new global society.

"Drill into us... the Rebel Tradition": The Contest over Southern Identity in Black and White Women's Clubs, South Carolina, 1898-1930

IN HER MEMOIRS, MAMIE GARVIN FIELDS, AN AFRICAN AMERICAN CLUB-WOMAN from Charleston, South Carolina, relates a story about the statue of South Carolina statesman John C. Calhoun that still stands in Francis Marion Square, in the center of downtown Charleston. According to Fields: At the same time that [Frederick] Douglass was preaching against slavery, John C. Calhoun was preaching for it.... Our white city fathers wanted to keep what [Calhoun] stood for alive.... [T]hey put up a life-size figure of John C. Calhoun preaching.... Blacks took that statue personally. As you passed by, here was Calhoun looking you in the face and telling you, Nigger, you may not be a slave, but I am back to see you stay in your place. Fields describes how black residents threw rocks at and otherwise defaced the statue, until it had to be raised out of reach of passersby.(1) Her words indicate that at the turn of the century--almost forty years after the South's defeat in the Civil War--black and white southerners still struggled with the meaning of defeat and emancipation. Many white women turned to the Lost Cause, the movement to honor the Confederacy, in order to recapture what they believed were the glory days of the South--the antebellum South of their childhood or of their parents. African American Charlestonians, on the other hand, rejected the message of black inferiority implicit in such statues as they sought to improve their and economic conditions. They focused instead on black history, pride, and American citizenship. Recently, historians have provided excellent analyses of white southern women's clubs' participation in Progressive-era reform and black clubwomen's efforts to uplift the race through similar, but separate, welfare programs.(2) This article focuses instead on the tension between black and white elite clubwomen's attempts to tell the story of southern, and American, history. The self-education component of women's clubs--their programs in history and literature--was important because it provided an opportunity for women's edification and growth, and the content of these offerings is critical as well. A survey of the history and literature examined by South Carolina club-women reveals how their consideration of these materials shaped their understanding of what it meant to be black or white in the postbellum South. Their attention to history and literature is compelling because clubwomen did more than simply study within the confines of the club. Through educational outreach and support for community libraries, they also attempted to transmit to children and the general public the ideals of southern, American, and racial identity that they celebrated. What is significant about black and white clubwomen in South Carolina, therefore, is not only their progressive behavior as reformers but also their ability to fuse history and identity construction with reform Their program of building southern identity through the study of southern history and literature--their cultural work--shaped the New South as much as their social work. Furthermore, their literary agenda is evident in their reform agenda: the welfare programs that white clubwomen built and lobbied for were for whites only, and white clubwomen in South Carolina did not embrace the interracial work that church women in the 1920s would promote. At the same time and without state aid, black clubwomen used their own resources to fund welfare programs for blacks. Ultimately, the racial underpinnings of the history that black and white clubwomen read, studied, and repeated, made white women part of the effort to create a culture of segregation in the New South as black women fought to combat that culture. In the late nineteenth century, building on an earlier tradition of charity through church and benevolence societies, vast numbers of black and white women across the nation began to participate in a myriad of women's organizations, including the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), church missionary societies, and woman suffrage associations. …

Common Law, Common Ground, and Jefferson's Principle

Thomas Jefferson's famous argument that earth belongs to the living - and therefore no generation has the right to rule another - is a standing challenge to anyone who believes that written constitutions (or, in many instances, statutes) are binding. Most answers to Jefferson's challenge rely, in one way or another, on a claim that being an American means owing an obligation of some kind to previous generations. These accounts should not be disparaged, but in a large and heterogeneous nation the obligation to adhere to decisions made decades or centuries ago should rest on something less contested. Our written Constitution performs two functions that justify adherence to it, without relying on a contested conception of American citizenship. First, the text, and the judgments of those who wrote and ratified it, are a source of precedents, roughly on a par with certain judicial decisions. Second, the text provides what game theory calls a focal point: it establishes common ground on questions (such as the length of a President's term) that need to be settled one way or another. There are no other justifications, beyond these two, for requiring adherence to the text of a document adopted long ago. But this account helps explain current practices that might otherwise seem unjustifiable: an emphasis on the words of the text often without regard to the intentions of the drafters, as evidenced, for example, in the debate over the incorporation of the Bill of Rights; the highly selective use of historical sources (what is often called law office history); the fact that the text of the Constitution matters most for issues that are the least important; and popular attitudes about constitutional amendment.

Racialization, Recognition, and Rights: Lumping and Splitting Multiracial Asian Americans in the 2000 Census

THE 2000 CENSUS WILL MARK a dramatic change in the way that “race” is officially enumerated in the United States to allow people to check more than one race. This is a significant change for the way people do and understand the concept of race, and will have potentially far-reaching effects for multiracial Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, and Asian Pacific Islander communities. The Census, as a representation of the state, is an ideal place to see how race is changing both practically and conceptually as people lobby the Census Bureau to change racial categories to accurately reflect their multiracial understanding.1 In this article, I examine the impact of changing the Census to allow people to check more than one race box on Asian Pacific Americans (APAs). Race is now widely recognized as being a contested and changing, socially constructed category.3 As historical proof of this, APAs have long been unable to fit the racial labels used by the U.S. government to classify them. For example, the plaintiffs in the infamous cases of Ozawa v. United States, 260 U.S. 178 (1922) and United States v. Thind, 261 U.S. 204 (1923) failed in their attempts to be considered “not Asian, Caucasian/white” in order to become naturalized citizens of the U.S. Those cases foreshadowed a legal framework that would continue throughout the 1900s to remind APAs that they were racially different, not white, and therefore ineligible for American citizenship.4 There has never been a comfortable fit historically for Asian Americans with racial categories used by the U.S.

Polish Nobel Prize Winners in Literature: Are They Really Polish?

In October of 1996, after she had received the Nobel Prize in Literature, Wislawa Szymborska was hailed by certain Swedish newspapers as the fifth winner of this Prize. This was a surprise for many readers, since Szymborska was supposed to be the fourth winner -- after Henryk Sienkiewicz (1905), Wladyslaw Reymont (1924) and Milosz (1980). Curiously, Szymborska's name followed that of Isaac Bashevis Singer, who, according to the Encarta encyclopedia was a Polish-born American who wrote in the Yiddish language [and] drew heavily on his background, and on the stories of Jewish and medieval European folklore [...]. In 1978 he won the Nobel Prize in literature for an 'impassioned narrative art' that is rooted in Polish-Jewish There is another interesting example of such a cross-cultural controversy concerning Polish Nobel Prize Winnners. A poem by Czeslaw Milosz, the 1980 Nobel Prize Winner, was included in The Best American Poetry 1999, edited by Robert Bly (Scribner 1999). The poem was written in Polish, published originally in Poland in Milosz's collection of poems and essays Piesek przydrozny (Roadside dog, 1997) and reprinted two years later by The Partisan Review in a translation made by the author in collaboration with Robert Hass. In Poland no one doubts that Milosz is a writer, a political exile who left Poland in 1951 to live in France and later in the United States. However, as far as the publisher of this anthology is concerned, the works of this poet rather belong to American literature. In a long biographical note, Milosz's connection is mentioned only once: [After World War II he] joined the diplomatic service. As a naturalized American citizen and a retired professor of the University of C alifornia at Berkeley, Milosz is described as an American poet. Indeed, it might be said that Singer is a Jewish-American writer, who was born and lived in Poland and his works were much influenced by his background and that Milosz is a Polish-American writer born in Lithuania into a Polish-Lithuanian family. However, on the official list of the Nobel Committee, both writers are mentioned as American laureates, possibly because they had American citizenship. These two cases suggest that it may be problematic define categorically who is in fact a Polish Nobel Prize winner in literature. What is the decisive factor? The writer's native language? The language of the work? Citizenship? Country of origin? Country of residence, or the culture which has a fundamental influence on his or her works? Is Singer--as a writer--Polish, Jewish, or American? Is Milosz Polish, Lithuanian, or American? Singer's and Milosz's Nobel Prizes were completely unexpected in Poland because both writers were relatively unknown in their native country. In the sixties and seventies, when Singer's works were gaining popularity in America and Europe, they were still unknown in Poland because of the anti-Semitic censorship of the Communist government. When Milosz received the Prize, in Poland all his works were banned for political reasons. The debate about who belongs to the list of Nobel Prize winners in literature may lead to a discussion about what constitutes culture. …

Citizens, Strangers and In-Betweens: Essays on Immigration and Citizenship

* Preface * Acknowledgments Part 1: Contexts * 1. The Immigration System Today * Demographics * Public Attitudes * The Evolution of the Immigration Control System * The Current Legal Admissions System * The 1996 Legislation: Strengthening Enforcement * The 1997 Amnesty Part 2: The Courts and Immigration * 2. The Transformation of Immigration Law * The Classical Conception of Immigration Law * Pressures for Change * The Communitarian Conception of Immigration Law * The Future of Immigration Law * Conclusion * 3. Continuity and Change in the Courts: 1979-1990 * Summary of Major Findings * Conclusion Part 3: The Politics of Immigration * 4. The Politics of Rapid Legal Change: Immigration Policy in the 1980s * Introduction * Periodizing Immigration Reform: The 1980s * External Events * Political Entrepreneurship * The Changing Balance of Interests * Ideas * Conclusion * 5. Reform Continues: 1990-1998 * 6. The Message of Proposition 187: Facing Up to Illegal Immigration * Brennan's Legacy * Why the Court May Turn * What Voters Were Saying * Do Outsiders Have Claims on America? * Elusive Candor Part 4: Citizenship and Community * 7. The Devaluation of American Citizenship * The Equality Principle * The Due Process Principle * The Consent Principle * An Evaluation of Devaluation * 8. The Reevaluation of American Citizenship * Citizenship in the International Domain * Citizenship in the Domestic Domain * Citizenship in the Federal System * A Brief Note on Post-National Citizenship, * Conclusion * 9. Consensual Citizenship * 10. Plural Citizenships * The Contemporary Debate and Context * Some Policy-Relevant Distinctions * An Assessment of Dual Citizenship * Possible Reforms Part 5: Current Policy Debates * 11. The New Immigration and the Old Civil Rights * Demographic Changes * Legal Changes * Socioeconomic Changes * Ideological Changes * Political Changes * Reappraising the Agenda * 12. Perpetual Motion: Migrations and Cultures * The Analytic Project * The Question of Culture * The Selectivity and Diversity of Migration * Discrimination and Immigrant Success * Immigrants in Politics and Markets * Immigrant Assimilation * The Future of Immigration Policy * 13. Refugee Burden-Sharing: A Modest Proposal * The Current Regime for Protecting Refugees * The Comprehensive Plan of Action * Four Remedial Strategies * The Proposal: Proportional Burden-Sharing * A Response to (Anticipated) Critics * Conclusion * 14. Alien Ruminations: What Immigrants Have Wrought in America * Demography * Carrying Capacity * Economic Impacts * Cultural Assimilation * Politics * Conclusion * Notes * Bibliography * Index

Henry Ries

When I first met Henry Ries in his home in Manhattan in the mid-1980s, I was struck by his generosity in telling me about his career. Born in 1917 in Berlin-Wilmersdorf in an assimilated Jewish family, Henry (born Heinz) Ries left for New York on 13 January 1938. Initially, he found employment in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where he taught photography at the Jewish community centre and could use their laboratory for his own work. He tried to enlist in the United States Army in December 1941, but this was not possible, since he was an 'enemy alien' and a recent emigrant without American citizenship. In May 1943, he joined the Army Air Corps and received American citizenship. Initially posted to the Pacific theatre, making aerial photographs of China for the 20th Bomber Command, he subsequently transferred to the European theatre, arriving in London in late May 1945. Assigned to the ‘Office Director of Intelligence’, his first job was to evaluate Heinrich Himmler's ‘secret state library’ correspondence with the SS, Hitler, Goebbels, Goring, and others, which was later utilized in the Nuremberg Medical Trial. Three months later, Ries was transferred to Berlin.

A Beautiful Mind

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Book ReviewFull AccessA Beautiful MindMary V. Seeman, M.D.Mary V. SeemanSearch for more papers by this author, M.D.Published Online:1 Sep 1999https://doi.org/10.1176/ps.50.9.1236AboutSectionsView EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail This is a gripping book for the general public as well as for the mental health professional. It is the biography of John Nash, who in 1994 received the Nobel Prize in economics for his doctoral work—done several decades earlier, at age 21—on noncooperative game theory, the economics theory that currently dominates privatization, megamergers, big government, and international trade.What makes the story of John Nash so very unusual is that this young MIT mathematician, after publishing several brilliant, breakthrough mathematical proofs much marveled at and envied, developed, at age 30, a malignant form of schizophrenia that put a virtual end to his career in mathematics. Having given the world of economics the Nash equilibrium, John Nash lost his own mental equilibrium, resigned his professorship, and spent his time deciphering the cryptic meanings of numbers and signs, trying to dispose of his American citizenship, writing letters that made no sense, and eluding malevolent forces whose voices drummed in his head.After 35 years of partial insanity, John Nash, then approaching 70, went into remission and began doing mathematics again. Shortly thereafter, his admirers and intellectual debtors nominated him for the Nobel Prize.Sylvia Nasar, economics correspondent for the New York Times, traces his story from his childhood in West Virginia through his graduate years at Princeton and his faculty years at MIT before his breakdown. She paints a picture of an ambitious, intuitive, arrogant, socially awkward mathematics whiz who develops intense crushes on young men but who winds up with two women and a son by each. Although the story is mainly about John Nash, it also describes his family, his friends, and his colleagues and rivals amid the competitive world of pure mathematics. We get to know the two women, Eleanor and Alicia, each admirable in her own way. We get to know the two sons, both named John, one growing up in foster homes and poverty, estranged from his father, and the other, much loved and attended, a promising mathematician and brilliant chess player who succumbs to schizophrenia at age 17.We are also given a glimpse of the behind-the-scenes maneuvering that takes place at the Nobel committee level, how decisions are made and unmade, and how feverish the lobbying can be. Sylvia Nasar conducted more than a hundred interviews with those who knew John Nash intimately, she combed archives, and she sought out the writings of Robert Lowell, who was hospitalized at McLean Hospital during a period when John Nash was also a patient there. She read letters, postcards, and e-mail sent from John Nash to his mother and sister and to his colleagues. She talked with him personally.A Beautiful Mind is an attempt to understand many imponderables. That spark of creativity—where did it come from? That sudden descent into delusion—what caused it? The gradual return to health—what permitted it? The graver, earlier form of illness in the second generation—what determines it? The connection between genius and madness—does it exist?Dr. Seeman is Tapscott professor and chair of schizophrenia studies in the department of psychiatry at the University of Toronto in Ontario, Canada.by Sylvia Nasar; New York City, Simon & Schuster, 1998, 437 pages, $25 FiguresReferencesCited byDetailsCited ByNone Volume 50Issue 9 September 1999Pages 1236-1236 Metrics History Published online 1 September 1999 Published in print 1 September 1999

Imagining the nation: Asian American literature and cultural consent

Introduction: alienation, abjection, and Asian American citizenship Part I. Emergence: 1. Aiiieeeee! and the predicament of Asian American articulation 2. Can Maxine Hong Kingston speak? The contingency of The Woman Warrior Part II. Claiming America: 3. Canon, collaboration, and the corporeality of culture 4. American romances, immigrant incarnations Part III. Whither Asia: 5. Genes, generation, and geospiritual (be)longings 6. Eccentric homes: topography pedagogy, and memory Part IC. Representation Reconsidered: 7. The look, the act, the transvestic, and the transpirational Asian 8. Ethnic agency and the challenge of representation Conclusion: Asian American identity in difference and Diaspora Notes Index.

Louis Riel and the United States

Among the ironies of Canadian history is the fact that the most prominent individual ever executed for treason against the Canadian state--Louis Riel--was at the time of his execution an American citizen. Riel's relationship with the United States had been a long and complicated one. The complex tale tells us a good deal about the man, his aspirations, and the Metis world of nationality in the nineteenth century.(1) The United States and its government touched Louis Riel's life in many different ways over the years. In 1869-70, during the Red River uprising, American annexation provided an alternative political course--or the threat of one--to mere acquiescence to the impending Canadian takeover. American examples, particularly at the territorial level, also influenced some of Riel's demands upon Canada. From the takeover of Manitoba by the Wolseley expedition in August 1870 to Riel's institutionalization for mental distress in 1876--and to a lesser extent beyond--the United States served two explicit purposes for Riel. One was to provide a safe haven from Canadian legal prosecution. The other was as the place where Riel thought he and his people might find support for an invasion of Manitoba that would save the Metis from their Canadian occupiers. That support might come from the American government, from private parties such as the Fenians, or from the Native chiefs who lived mainly in the western states. Riel's early years of American residency also had a more subtle impact upon him than he himself might have recognized; several of the important intellectual influences upon his prophetic system, such as numerology and theosophy, had American origins. After Riel's release from hospital in 1878, the United States (and American citizenship) came to serve as a symbol for Riel's efforts to remake his life as an ordinary citizen and family man. As part of these efforts at beginning again, the United States was also the home of a part of the larger Metis community, which Riel could attempt to lead and reform. At the end, the United States government represented Riel's last hope for the mercy recommended by his jury, mercy that the Canadian government refused to grant. The United States rejected Riel, just as he had rejected its promise of a new life by returning to Saskatchewan in 1884. Louis Riel was born 22 October 1844 in the Red River settlement, officially known as the territory of Assiniboia. The territory was administered by the Hudson's Bay Company under charter from the British Crown. Although Red River was not legally a British colony, it was indisputably British in terms of sovereignty. Unquestionably, Riel was born a British subject, a birthright he never attempted to deny and often spoke about quite proudly. At the same time, like many Metis, he felt relatively comfortable on either side of the border and always had an implicit transnational identity.(2) In 1869 Riel assumed leadership of a local movement of insurgency against the transfer of the Hudson's Bay Company's western territory to the government of Canada.(3) Whether or not the movement was actually a rebellion is a moot point. The chief issue was the failure of any of the senior governments to take any account of the interests of the residents of Red River in negotiating the transfer. The Metis firmly told the governor-in-waiting, William McDougall, and other Canadian officials that they were not welcome in the settlement. Canada refused to accept sovereignty over the territory until the insurgency had been quelled, and the insurgent provisional government insisted that it was the legitimate heir of the Hudson's Bay Company. In any case, the confused political situation in Red River provided very troubled waters in which Americans could hardly avoid fishing. Some interests in the United States had cast a covetous eye on the fertile northern Red River Valley for many years, and some openly annexationist sentiment was expressed in American newspapers during the troubles of 1869-70. …

The Ernst von Dohnanyi Collection at the Florida State University

Between the years 1949 and 1960, the pianist, composer, conductor, and pedagogue Ernst yon Dohnanyi (1877-1960) was on the faculty of the Florida State University (FSU). Having already commemorated his contribution to the school in 1987 through the naming of the Ernst yon Dohnanyi Recital Hall, the university has now established the Ernst von Dohnanyi Collection, containing books, scrapbooks, manuscripts, photographs, letters, and recordings, as well as Dohnanyi's personal collection of facsimiles and published music. Dohnanyi was considered one of the great musicians of his time. He appeared as a pianist and conductor in numerous concert venues throughout Europe and the United States between 1897 and 1944, giving fifteen hundred concerts during the first thirty years of his career. While receiving much critical acclaim for his piano-playing, conducting, and composing, Dohnanyi taught at the Hochschule fur Musik in Berlin and the Liszt Ferenc Zenemuveszeti Foiskola (Franz Liszt Academy of Music) in Budapest. He eventually became director of the academy, and served as conductor of the Budapesti Filharmoniai Tarsasag (Budapest Philharmonic Society) and music director of the Magyar Radio (Hungarian Radio) as he continued to tour internationally. When Hungary became aligned with Nazi Germany, Dohnanyi refused to implement anti-Semitic regulations and resigned from all of his positions. He fled his war-torn homeland when the Soviets began to attack in November 1944. Because he had stayed in Hungary throughout the German occupation, Dohnanyi was accused of being sympathetic to the previous regime and became a target for political persecution by the new communist government. Among other things, he was accused of delivering ailing Jewish-Hungarian musicians from a local hospital to the gestapo on his way out of the country. Ironically, these accusations were propagated by a man whom Dohnanyi had anonymously saved from the concentration camps - something he had done for numerous Hungarians. Dohnanyi was eventually able to disprove the allegations that he was a Nazi war criminal. In 1945, the Allied Occupation Authority exonerated him of all charges, and the communist Hungarian government itself rejected the accusations. Although several prominent Jewish-Hungarian musicians testified in Dohnanyi's favor, new rumors arose that Dohnanyi was an anti-Semite. Even after this was also refuted, Dohnanyi was attacked by communist authorities simply because he was not a communist. A barrage of false accusations would follow Dohnanyi for the rest of his life, damaging his reputation and preventing him from reestablishing himself as an international performer. In an attempt to protect his family and rejuvenate his career, Dohnanyi fled Europe in 1948. For this, he drew even more criticism. One Hungarian newspaper asserted that Dohnanyi was to be granted American citizenship as a reward for his treacherous activities against Soviet-dominated Hungary.(1) Shortly after this article appeared, Dohnanyi was officially declared a war criminal by the Soviet-controlled Hungarian government. Even in America, Dohnanyi's performances were frequently canceled because of the lingering rumors. After an exhausting immigration process, Dohnanyi settled in Tallahassee, Florida, to teach at FSU. The attacks on Dohnanyi abated enough for him to make a triumphant re-debut at Carnegie Hall in 1953 at the age of seventy-six. Dohnanyi continued to teach and perform up to the time of his death in 1960; he died in New York City, where he was making recordings for the Everest label. Following the 1945 death of Bela Bartok, who was Dohnanyi's last powerful Hungarian supporter, the Hungarian establishment attempted to deny Dohnanyi had ever lived.(2) Even after his death, Dohnanyi's reputation continued to be assaulted. In 1968, however, Hungarian Prime Minister Janos Kadar amended national policy to allow for noncommunist thought. …

The Possessive Self in Mary Antin and Anzia Yezierska: Gender, Jewishness, and the Assumptions of Americanization

Mary Antin was not modest in her use of the possessive case inThe Promised Land— in her iterations ofMine, Mine, Mine. While still a schoolgirl, Antin asserted that everything she saw in the Boston Public Library, a “treasure house” of wisdom and art, was “Mine.” As the child of a newly naturalized American, she felt entitled to claim possession; the library and its treasured holdings were “Mine,” she said, “because I was a citizen; mine, though I was born an alien; mine … My palace —mine! … This is mine” (266, original emphasis). By the time Antin came to the soaring conclusion ofThe Promised Land, she had exchanged her natural (and naturalized) father for the country's Founding Father, and as the child of George Washington, she claimed as her “heritage” everything in human evolutionary history that had led to the creation of America and everything yet to be evolved. “I am the youngest of America's children,” she wrote, “and into my hands is given all her priceless heritage … Mine is the whole majestic past, and mine is the shining future” (286). In swooping hyperbole, Antin equated American citizenship with possession, and possession with inheritance, property, and rights: with a treasure house in which she “had a right to be … at home” (266).

US citizenship policy in the pacific territory of Guam

In 1950 the United States Congress approved the Organic Act of the Territorial Government of Guam which provided the island with a republican form of local government and American citizenship. The Act, however, does not completely fulfill the requirements of US Constitutional principles and law. Guamanians do not have representation in the Federal Government and do not pay Federal income taxes. The Organic Act produced a strange and confusing relationship between the United States and Guam. The contention of this research is that the fundamental problem with US citizenship policy in the Territory of Guam is (1) constitutional ambiguity, and (2) associated misconceptions concerning the theory and practice of American federalism, both of which might be remedied through either semi‐sovereignty of American statehood, or Guamanian independence.

Immigration et citoyenneté aux Etats-Unis : la dialectique de l’inclusion et de l’exclusion.

The article introduces the central theme with a history of the laws of naturalization from colonial times to the present, in relation to the changing policies of immigration and the meanings of citizenship. It takes into account the different and sometimes contradictory local and federal levels of legislation and practices. In a second part, it reviews the different attitudes of migrants towards American citizenship and some of the reasons that induced them to apply for naturalization.

The International within the National: American Studies and Asian American Critique

ly; there is never a moment in which race exists simply as "race." Up until 1870, American citizenship was granted exclusively to white male persons; in 1870, men of African descent could become naturalized, but the bar to citizenship remained for Asian men until the repeal acts of 1943-52. Whereas the "masculinity" of the citizen was first inseparable from his "whiteness," as the state extended citizenship to nonwhite male persons, it formally designated these subjects "male" as well. The 1943 enfranchisement of the Chinese American into citizenship, for example, constituted the Chinese immigrant subject as male; in the 1946 modification of the Magnuson Act, the Chinese wives of U.S. citizens were exempted from the permitted annual quota; as the law changed to reclassify "Chinese immigrant" as eligible for naturalization and citizenship, female immigrants were not included in this reclassification but were in effect specified only in relation to the changed status of "the Chinese immigrant" who was legally presumed to be male. Thus, the administration of citizenship for Asians was simultaneously a "technology" of racialization and gendering. John Kuo Wei Tchen has demonstrated that from the late nineteenth-century until the 1940s, Chinese immigrant masculinity had been socially and institutionally marked as different from that of Angloand Euro-American "white" citizens owing to the forms of work and community that had been historically available to Chinese men as the result of the immigration laws restricting female immigration. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.120 on Wed, 14 Sep 2016 05:55:05 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

The United States: A Nation of Nations

At the end of the twentieth century, the United States remains what it was when the Pilgrim Fathers landed in New England: "God's Country." This is not to suggest the blasphemous bon mot that, if God did exist, he would apply for American citizenship. What I mean is that the collapse of the Soviet Union and the decline of ideological absolutism were more sud den and sweeping than most observers anticipated. In less than a couple of years the "Evil Empire," in President Ronald Reagan's biblical rhetoric, sim ply disappeared from the map of the world. When I asked Mr. Mikhail Gorbachev, at a UNESCO seminar in Venice, how he did it, his answer was disarmingly candid: "It was not difficult. It was inevitable." It is my contention that the United States is still "God's Country," but in a more profane sense: that is to say, from a strictly social and political point of view. It provides a unique economic, social, and cultural laboratory. It is a dynamic force in constant change even while remaining basically faithful to the fundamental principles embodied and expressed in the Constitution as the transcendent Law of the Land. This does not mean that other countries of the world should regard the United States as a normative standard or criterion with which to measure their domestic

De l’immigrant au citoyen : les dilemmes de la naturalisation pour les Mexicains et les Asiatiques depuis 1965

Today Asian immigrants regardless of their national origins have the highest naturalization rates in the United States and Mexicans the lowest, although the latter have been naturalized in increasingly greater numbers in the 1990s. Such difference can be partly accounted for by the higher socio-economic status of Asian entrants since the immigration reform of 1965, and by the Mexicans' tradition of cyclical migration. Other factors are the citizens' right of family reunification and the recent measures restricting public aid to both illegal and legal immigrants. Political motivations have to be relativized since Asians are among the least politicized groups in the U.S. Yet, as the result of a complex interaction of these factors, naturalization tends to become a strategy of defense that gives it a new political connotation in the context of a redefinition of American citizenship.

Civil Societies Between Difference and Solidarity: Rethinking Integration in the Fragmented Public Sphere

In l974, after twenty years of relatively successful struggles for the expansion of American citizenship, efforts that began with Black Americans and expanded to include other racial minorities and women, a scholar named Peter Adler (l974:369-371) concluded a widely used anthology called Intercultural Communication by offering a definition of ‘multicultural’. Emphasising the ‘psychoculturally adaptive’, Adler portrayed a protean, ever-changing, integrative actor who had the desire and ability to put himself in the shoes of the other person in a relativising, cross-over, non-judgmental way. ‘Multicultural man’, he wrote, ‘maintains no clear boundaries between himself and the varieties of personal and cultural contexts he may find himself in’. He is ‘capable of major shifts in his frame of reference and embodies the ability to disavow a permanent character … He is a person who is always in the process of becoming a part of and apart from a given cultural context. He is very much a formative being, resilient, changing, and evolutionary’ (italics added).