Future Of America Research Articles

Jews and Gentiles in Early America: 1654–1800 (review)

Reviewed by: Jews and Gentiles in Early America: 1654–1800 Hasia R. Diner Jews and Gentiles in Early America: 1654–1800, by William Pencak. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005. 321 pp. $29.95. Jews and Gentiles in Early America fills an important gap in the scholarship on American Jewish history and the history of early America. It offers a community by-community analysis of how Jews, a numerically insignificant but still visible element in the population, fit into the political and cultural world of America, from the years of the first settlement in the middle of the seventeenth century through the early national period, with the book ending in 1800. Pencak has organized his material, chapter by chapter, geographically, devoting his book to the five cities in which Jews lived in substantial enough numbers to have led them to create Jewish communal institutions. These five communities, whose Jews, their congregations, and their complex interactions with the vastly larger non-Jewish majority constitute the heart of Jews and Gentiles in Early America, New York, Newport, Rhode Island, Charleston, South Carolina, Savannah, Georgia and Philadelphia, all seaport cities, housed America's first Jewish communities. For each community Pencak asks a series of questions. He wants to know how the local, non-Jewish population received the Jews who settled in their midst. Did they greet the Jews warmly or did they express antipathy towards the non-Christian newcomers? Where did anti-Jewish feelings come from, both in terms of historical origins and the social and economic strata of the local population? Why did the residents of some colonies provide a more hospitable [End Page 198] environment than others and how did differing levels of welcome—or the lack thereof—leave its mark on the Jews? Pencak turns his attention, as such, not just to the words and deeds of the Christian majority, expressed in print and in the actions of courts and legislatures, but to the Jews themselves. He seeks to explore how Jews navigated life in the colonies and in the new nation. To what degree did they play a role in the Revolution, and how did they inject themselves into the political life of the states which emerged from the former colonies? Pencak's questions go further, and in posing them he provides a useful service to historians. How did Jews respond to attacks on their character and their religion when negative images became part of the public discourse? What did Jews do to defend themselves, and what did their arguments reveal about their understanding of themselves and their place in America, from the middle of the seventeenth century to the onset of the nineteenth? Each colony, then state, had its own history, and each history took its shape from the particular political, religious, and cultural characteristics that dominated the local scene. Pencak discerns, especially in the long era before the Revolution, the existence of popular anti-Jewish feeling emanating primarily from the poorer classes. Jews, in part because of their role in trade, tended to be associated with the local colonial elites. Therefore, the rise of democratic stirrings among the less well off ignited anti-Jewish rhetoric. In the age of the Revolution and in the decade that followed, in which state constitutions got written and new a political apparatus came into play, antisemitism increased. Jews, for their part, according to Pencak, rose up to their own defense. They sought to disprove arguments hurled against them, claiming the rights of citizenship on the basis of their contributions to the economy, to the polity, and to the Revolution. They went out of their way to stress their respectability and even altered the structures of their congregations to make them more fitting to the new, more egalitarian ethos of post-Revolutionary times. Jews of the era worried about their continued future in America and sought both to prove their worthiness against negative rhetoric and to counter the desire of Christian missionaries to convert the Jews, a theme that deserved in actuality much greater attention in the book than it received. The strength of this book lies in the five substantive chapters. While Pencak relies a bit too much on secondary...

Book Review: Myers, D. (2007). Immigrants and Boomers: Forging a New Social Contract for the Future of America. New York: Russell Sage

Book Review: Myers, D. (2007). Immigrants and Boomers: Forging a New Social Contract for the Future of America. New York: Russell Sage

Why Lawyers Should Care about Sustainable Development

This essay aims to persuade the U.S. environmental law profession that sustainable development is important to them, in their various roles as advocates, counselors, and citizens. Sustainable development is increasingly important to their clients, businesses, causes, or communities. As federal, state, and local governments move to sustainable development, they will need the guidance of the legal profession in the fundamental law reform that is required, including not only better environmental statutes but also the widespread adoption of new legal instruments such as economic tools, tax laws, property laws, and land use and planning authorities. Corporations will need the service of counsel to embrace the new, more comprehensive system of regulation, incentives, and contracts, including implications for compliance and liability, as well as opportunities for profit. Citizen organizations will need the best possible lawyering to ensure that implementation protects the public interest. Environmental lawyers should also care because sustainable development is important to the future of America. Sustainable development is squarely within the U.S. national interest, as traditionally defined â014 in our economic interest, in our social interest, in our security interest. The United States is by far the world's largest consumer of energy and materials, and the world's largest polluter, so it is impossible to achieve sustainable development on a global basis without U.S. participation in a broad international effort, including implementation across American society. In turn, U.S. economic health depends on foreign resources and foreign markets, including, importantly, those in the poorer countries. Given the threat to our nation and our planet, however, sustainable development may require more than participation by attorneys; it may imply a new professional duty.

The American Scene, or Paradise Lost

Taking as its starting point Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, and with reference to H.G. Wells's The Future in America , this essay considers the difficulty of James's prose in The American Scene . It takes up James's reference to Plato in a letter to Edith Wharton and, by way of suggesting how James might be read and understood, it deals in particular with certain aspects of the chapter on Philadelphia, and ends by suggesting how unwilling America was to hear him or to honour his intentions.

Immigrants and boomers: forging a new social contract for the future of America

Immigrants and boomers: forging a new social contract for the future of America

Book Review: This Land: The Battle over Sprawl and the Future of America, by Anthony Flint. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. 298 pp. $24.95 (cloth)

Book Review: This Land: The Battle over Sprawl and the Future of America, by Anthony Flint. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. 298 pp. $24.95 (cloth)

Sister Societies: Women's Antislavery Organizations in Antebellum America, and: Slavery and the Peculiar Solution: A History of the American Colonization Society (review)

Reviewed by: Sister Societies: Women's Antislavery Organizations in Antebellum America, and: Slavery and the Peculiar Solution: A History of the American Colonization Society Bryan Rommel-Ruiz (bio) Sister Societies: Women's Antislavery Organizations in Antebellum America. By Beth A. Salerno. (Dekalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2005. Pp. x, 233. Cloth, $38.00.) Slavery and the Peculiar Solution: A History of the American Colonization Society. By Eric Burin. (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2005. Pp. xiv, 223. Cloth, $59.95.) During his visit to the United States in the mid-nineteenth century, Alexis de Tocqueville marveled at the American propensity for volunteerism [End Page 184] and establishing associations. Indeed, for Tocqueville, in order to understand American democracy, one needs to examine the political and civic associations in the United States closely. By participating in their associations, Americans truly lived democracy. At their associations, Americans wrote constitutions, voted members for offices, raised funds, debated with one another, created communication networks that circulated ideas, and importantly, actively engaged the public. American associations did not simply mimic national political institutions; they reinforced and legitimated those institutions by enabling Americans to practice democracy in their everyday lives. It seemed that wherever De Tocqueville turned, he saw Americans immersed in associational life. Whether in temperance organizations, antislavery societies, or similar institutions, Americans were engaged in activities that made politics their lifeblood. It is important to keep Tocqueville's perspective in mind when considering women's antislavery organizations or the American Colonization Society, the subjects of Beth Salerno's Sister Societies: Women's Anti-Slavery Organizations in Antebellum America and Eric Burin's Slavery and the Peculiar Solution: A History of the American Colonization Society. Through the activities of black and white women in the North (Salerno), or colonization advocates from the North and South, as well as black and white (Burin), these authors examine the ways the "peculiar" dilemma of American slavery galvanized people who used civil associations to address the politically, economically, and morally provocative issue of emancipation. Even as political leaders sought to marginalize slavery from national affairs, in the private sector Americans as diverse as black women in Massachusetts and proslavery plantation owners in Maryland were working to solve the "peculiar" problem that plagued the nation. In their important books, Salerno and Burin remind us that Americans at the grassroots level were seriously engaged in the debate over slavery's future in America, and by extension the role of African Americans in the American republic. In Sister Societies, Salerno documents the emergence of female antislavery societies in the northern United States and the ways women negotiated the contested terrain between the private and public sphere. As protectors and teachers of moral virtue, women were expected to refrain from the corrupt world of politics. But as abolitionists argued, it was from their position as matrons of morality that women needed to work to end the immoral practice of slavery. As Salerno points out, in their meetings, women would stress slavery's destabilizing impact upon women, children, and the family, and, more provocatively, they petitioned [End Page 185] legislators to abolish slavery. Rather than prompting a new political presence in the public sphere, advocating for emancipation was part of a long tradition of women using public and political means to support and protect the domestic sphere. Nevertheless, Salerno demonstrates that female antislavery societies met strong resistance, not just from antiabolitionists but also from those who believed that women should not engage in political affairs. Fearing that women were participating in "promiscuous" associations (ones where women encountered and worked with men), laboring with African Americans, or, most provocatively, lecturing and speaking out against slavery, critics contended that these women were turning social and gender conventions upside down. In her careful analysis, Salerno cautions readers that the majority of members of female antislavery societies did not see their public activity as subverting gender norms. Yes, they were politicized, but in ways to challenge slavery. And while some women were provoked to question contemporary views of gender and racial categories, most were not. Women's historians have called attention to the ways that female participation in antislavery associations fed into a women's movement that...

The New Crisis of Public Service Employment

These are unprecedented times for public service workers and the unions that represent their interests. The largest of these unions is the 1.4 million-member American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), AFL-CIO. In recent years, AFSCME has been thrust into the role of defending sweeping attacks on public employees and public budgets at every level of government. Throughout its 70-year history, AFSCME has waged effective battles that have enabled public employees to join the ranks of the middle class—winning collective bargaining rights, facilitating the adoption of merit-based job performance systems, growing public employee pension plans, securing wage increases, and helping create a vibrant public sector that provides effective services to citizens and helps local economies realize their potential. Today, much of the historic progress achieved by public workers is at risk. Ultimately, how successfully AFSCME and its fellow public unions meet five core challenges in the areas of privatization—fiscal limits, civil service reform and pension reform—will determine the future of America's public sector.

The past and future of America's economy: long waves of innovation that power cycles of growth

Robert Atkinson examines this process of change over the past 150 year and explores the responses of people and institutions. The book then analyzes today's New Economy, including the technology system, and effects on markets, organizations, workers, and governance.

End of the line: the failure of Amtrak reform and the future of America's passenger trains

This book contends that Amtrak is hopelessly flawed and should be phased out and suggests directions for America�s future. The book focuses on developments since the passage of the Amtrak Reform and Accountability Act (ARAA) of 1997. It provides a brief history of Amtrak and describes the many years of mismanagement that lead up to the enactment of the ARAA; outlines the proposed reforms and Amtrak thwarted them; describes how Amtrak continually demands more subsidies and threatens to shut down when it has cash-flow problems; assesses post-reform developments and concludes that Amtrak� future is hopeless and that preserving Amtrak is irrational; examines myths about the value of Amtrak and fallacies about the cost of Amtrak; considers the threat of terrorism against rail passenger systems and highlights some train safety issues in New York City that Amtrak has not addressed; describes how, in recent years Amtrak has managed to alienate its major institutional customers�local commuter agencies and state transportation departments-and why many public agencies contracting with Amtrak may seek alternative operators in the future; argues that it is time to replace Amtrak with something more workable and relevant; and surveys what Great Britain, Japan, Canada, and the United States have done to privatize and develop publicly owned railroads. The book also considers some creative approaches to rail transportation.

Iran’s Nuclear Program: U.S. Options After the Elections

Iran’s growing nuclear capability is emerging as the number one issue for the Bush Administration in its second term. For the past three years, the dominant focus on Iraq, in the words of former Secretary of State Colin Powell, “sucked the oxygen” from other security issues. Now, however, it is increasingly Iran that stands center-stage in defining the uses and limits of the strategy of preemption, the agenda for the broader Middle East, and the future of America’s relations with Europe.

No Fire Next Time: Black-Korean Conflicts and the Future of America's Cities

No Fire Next Time: Black-Korean Conflicts and the Future of America's Cities. By Patrick D. Joyce. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003. 240 pages. 19.95 paper.Patrick D. Joyce's book not only has a provocative title but also says something important about the future of America's cities. Joyce argues that the United States, and by extension, especially its cities, faces a contentious future, and that this is suggested by three trends: First, racial and ethnic diversity is increasing; second, economic inequality has widened; and third, our governing institutions have weakened. He suggests that these trends originate in separate causes, but their coming together at the same point in history means that the potential for racial and ethnic tension may be heightened just as our capacity to cope with them have diminished (p. 3). Central to his concerns is the black-Korean conflict in American cities.

No Fire Next Time: Black-Korean Conflicts and the Future of America's Cities

No Fire Next Time: Black-Korean Conflicts and the Future of America's Cities

An Aristocracy of Everyone: The Politics of Education and the Future of America

Should community service be a voluntary endeavor or a required activity for college students? Benjamin R. Barber writes that civic education should be a part of the university’s mandatory curriculum.

No fire next time: Black-Korean conflicts and the future of America's cities

No fire next time: Black-Korean conflicts and the future of America's cities

Critical Issues in Bioterrorism Preparedness

The Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Survey (BPRS) was a survey of Ohio local health departments' capacity to respond to bioterrorism. Soon after completion of the BPRS, the events of September 11 occurred, followed by the human cases of anthrax. The Ohio Response to Bioterrorism 2001 Survey (ORB) identified bioterrorism preparedness issues related to the suspected anthrax incidents. The BPRS measured capacity before September 11, 2001, and the ORB measured Ohio communities' response to white powder incidents. The BPRS and ORB provided independent and outcome measures related to the 2001-bioterrorism events. The significant bioterrorism response issues were: monitoring critical or unexplained deaths and clusters or symptoms; training on bioterrorism agents; integration of medical and criminal investigations of bioterrorism incidents; development of bioterrorism emergency response plans to include agencies to be contacted, management strategies for implementing mass vaccination, prophylaxis, treatment distribution and administration; and participation in a bioterrorism field or tabletop exercise. These results are confirmed and extended by studies by the US General Accounting Office, the Rand Corporation, Trust in the Future of America's Health foundation, and a follow-up survey of issues during a simulated covert smallpox attack.

The new Chinese empire and what it means for the United States

A leading expert's brilliant analysis of how China will finally accept liberalism, and what that will mean for the United States. . Some observers expect China to become an economic superpower. Others expect it to fragment into pieces. Is China nationalistic and on the march, or is it a stumbling Communist dinosaur? Is it already a billion-citizen member of the global village? Is it, as the Clinton administration claimed, a strategic partner of the US ?Ross Terrill addresses the question upon which all these others depend: Is the People's Republic of China, whose polity is a hybrid of Chinese tradition and Western Marxism, willing to become a modern nation or does it insist on remaining an empire? Since the collapse of three thousand years of Confucian monarchy in 1911, China has neither established a successful political system nor adjusted to being a nation state. Today it stands as the most contradictory of major powers, hovering between an unsustainable tradition and a yet-to-be-born political form that would support its new society and economy. Hanging in the balance are the prospect for freedom within China (for both Chinese and non-Chinese citizens of the People's Republic), the future of America's relations with China, and the security of China's neighbors. Drawing upon Terrill's long experience studying China as well as upon new research, this enlightening and rigorous book will be a must-read for everyone who has a stake in the future of the global world order.

No Fire Next Time: Black-Korean Conflicts and the Future of America's Cities

No Fire Next Time: Black-Korean Conflicts and the Future of America's Cities

Social Security and the family: addressing unmet needs in an underfunded system

As the baby boom generation gets closer to retirement, the debate over Social Security reform becomes more urgent. Unfortunately, policymakers remain fixated on individual accounts and other ways for the system to accumulate more savings. This narrow focus ignores an equally important, if not more important, challenge--how to address the needs of those who have been left out as demographics and work habits have changed the structure of the American family. In this book, budget experts and social scientists examine the history of family benefits in Social Security and show how changes in the retired population have affected the nature of these benefits and their ability to serve the elderly. They examine the current structure of spousal and survivors benefits and evaluate a variety of reform proposals--including individual accounts--that could improve the living standards of the neediest Social Security beneficiaries. It is essential analysis for anyone concerned about the future of America's most successful social program.

Prospective education for an innovation economy

This paper projects a positive future for America and the globe within an emerging “innovation economy”. The innovation economy is supported by knowledge workers and by emerging innovation workers. The authors offer examples in support of an innovation economy, stressing the development and application of strategic capital in selected areas: education; culture; the individual; society; and technology. The authors suggest that education services take the lead through a new “prospective” service mission. Prospective education would undertake continuous strategic projections and mine the most promising of these. Both services would help support the innovation economy and its innovative individuals and organizations.