Review Essay: Arthur M. Schlesinger\u27s Vision of America and the Multicultural Debate by Jesse M. Vazquez

In April of 1990, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., published an essay in the Wall Street Journal entitled When Ethnic Studies are Un-American. [1] The publication of that article followed, by about eight months, the release of New York State\u27s Department of Education\u27s now controversial report -- A Curriculum of Inclusion. [2] Interestingly, the publication of The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society also follows, by about seven months, the release of New York State\u27s second and most current Education Department report calling for the development of a new multicultural social studies curriculum -- One Nation, Many Peoples: A Declaration of Cultural Interdependence.[3

The Co-opting of Ethnic Studies in the American University: A Critical View

The birth of ethnic studies in the American university was accompanied by the politics and pedagogy of rage, pride, and mistrust for the then prevailing curricular academic structures and its tradition-bound, academically conservative gatekeepers. The campus take-overs, student demands, and confrontations were a common expression of the times, and concomitantly these were also shapers of the changing times. The presence or absence of ethnic minority faculty and students in our universities was and continues to be one of many indices by which we measure the willingness of this society to live up to its responsibility and promise to guarantee expanding educational opportunity for all. The creation of ethnic studies programs as a legitimate academic course of study in the university was one key part of that long range objective. Many universities now boast of departments and programs in Afro-American Studies, Puerto Rican Studies, Chicano Studies, Native American Studies, and other ethnic studies entities. Today\u27s student can leaf through the semester\u27s schedule of courses and choose from a wide array of ethnic studies offerings and think only of whether or not it fits into his/her program. Even traditional academic departments, formerly resolute in their refusal to include ethnic studies courses in their curriculum, now cross-list, and in many instances generate their own version of ethnic studies courses in direct competition with existing ethnic studies programs

The Ethnic Matrix: Implications for Human Service Practitioners

Most human services practitioners at one time or another must confront cultural issues which in many ways have a direct impact on their role and effectiveness as helping professionals. This article links the phenomenon of ethnic identity to problems, practices, and policies encountered in the field of human services. Although most of the theoretical concepts presented here are related to counseling psychology and education, other practitioners with culturally diverse client populations will also find the information applicable to their work. The social scientist, teacher and researcher, who is often the disseminator of theoretical and methodological paradigms, should also find these observations useful. The professor of applied and theoretical humanistic studies in many instances is the one who lays the foundation for an understanding of how sociological, cultural, and political phenomena interact with the psychological. The primary purpose of this article, therefore, is to present a psycho-social model (the ethnic matrix) for understanding ethnicity and the ethnic process in American society, and show how this model can be used by practitioners and researchers to further expand their own work

Defining Original Presentism

It is surprisingly hard to define presentism. Traditional definitions of the view, in terms of tensed existence statements, have turned out not to to be capable of convincingly distinguishing presentism from eternalism. Picking up on a recent proposal by Tallant, I suggest that we need to locate the break between eternalism and presentism on a much more fundamental level. The problem is that presentists have tried to express their view within a framework that is inherently eternalist. I call that framework the Fregean nexus, as it is defined by Frege’s atemporal understanding of predication. In particular, I show that the tense-logical understanding of tense which is treated as common ground in the debate rests on this very same Fregean nexus, and is thus inadequate for a proper definition of presentism. I contrast the Fregean nexus with what I call the original temporal nexus, which is based on an alternative, inherently temporal form of predication. Finally, I propose to define presentism in terms of the original temporal nexus, yielding original presentism. According to original presentism, temporal propositions are distinguished from atemporal ones not by aspects of their content, as they are on views based on the Fregean nexus, but by their form—in particular, by their form of predication

Absence of Dispersive Properties of Space for Electromagnetic Radiation Tested to ± 14 x 10^-5; Comments on a Proposal of Softky and Squire

In session I 1 of the Berkeley meeting of December 30, 1960, S. D. Softky and R. K. Squire proposed a test for dispersive properties of space for electromagnetic radiation by detonating a nuclear explosive at a distance of 10^6 miles from the earth and noting the arrival times of different types of radiation at detectors above the atmosphere. The purpose of this note is to point out that Softky and Squire have overlooked the fact that a test for the dispersive properties they postulate already exists, covering perhaps not quite as extensive a range of the electromagnetic spectrum as they hope to cover (they claim a factor of 10^11) but nevertheless sufficient to render any such effect extremely unlikely over a range of frequencies of a factor of 5 X 10^9. I refer to a measurement performed in 1950 by means of the bent quartz crystal diffraction spectrometer [1] of the wavelength of the annihilation radiation generated in a block of copper by positrons from the nuclide 64Cu

On the Use of a Cash Flow Time-Series to Measure Property Performance

Modern portfolio theory is increasingly being used to guide real estate portfolio decisions. However, to obtain meaningful results from complex mathematical techniques, the input data must meet at least two conditions: property values must be measured accurately, and the process by which property valuations change over time must be known. Neither of these conditions are satisfied by data currently available. This paper closely examines how value is measured and reported for commercial property. Commonly used time-series from NREI, NCREIF and ACLI are found wanting. An index of value using the popular "repeat sales" method is derived using data from Freddie Mac's multifamily portfolio. The focus of this paper is on developing an alternative measure of property performance based on property net operating income. Two cash flow indices are constructed from publicly available data and evaluated. It is recommended that the methodology developed here be used to create cash flow indices that can supplement or replace existing value indices in property analysis. The cash flow indices have much to offer researchers applying option-based models to real estate.

On the Topic of Jets: Disentangling Quarks and Gluons at Colliders

We introduce jet topics: a framework to identify underlying classes of jets from collider data. Because of a close mathematical relationship between distributions of observables in jets and emergent themes in sets of documents, we can apply recent techniques in "topic modeling" to extract jet topics from data with minimal or no input from simulation or theory. As a proof of concept with parton shower samples, we apply jet topics to determine separate quark and gluon jet distributions for constituent multiplicity. We also determine separate quark and gluon rapidity spectra from a mixed Z-plus-jet sample. While jet topics are defined directly from hadron-level multi-differential cross sections, one can also predict jet topics from first-principles theoretical calculations, with potential implications for how to define quark and gluon jets beyond leading-logarithmic accuracy. These investigations suggest that jet topics will be useful for extracting underlying jet distributions and fractions in a wide range of contexts at the Large Hadron Collider.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, 1 table. v2: Improved discussion to match PRL versio

Imaging coherent transport in graphene (Part II): Probing weak localization

Graphene has opened new avenues of research in quantum transport, with potential applications for coherent electronics. Coherent transport depends sensitively on scattering from microscopic disorder present in graphene samples: electron waves traveling along different paths interfere, changing the total conductance. Weak localization is produced by the coherent backscattering of waves, while universal conductance fluctuations are created by summing over all paths. In this work, we obtain conductance images of weak localization with a liquid-He-cooled scanning probe microscope, by using the tip to create a movable scatterer in a graphene device. This technique allows us to investigate coherent transport with a probe of size comparable to the electron wavelength. Images of magnetoconductance \textit{vs.} tip position map the effects of disorder by moving a single scatterer, revealing how electron interference is modified by the tip perturbation. The weak localization dip in conductivity at B=0 is obtained by averaging magnetoconductance traces at different positions of the tip-created scatterer. The width $\Delta B_{WL}$ of the dip yields an estimate of the electron coherence length $L_\phi$ at fixed charge density. This "scanning scatterer" method provides a new way of investigating coherent transport in graphene by directly perturbing the disorder configuration that creates these interferometric effects.Comment: 18 pages, 7 figure

[Review of] Clara E. Rodriguez. Puerto Ricans Born in the U.S.A

It may be apocryphal by now, but it has often been said, and it is repeated again by Rodriguez in her most recent contribution to the literature that Puerto Ricans still hold the dubious distinction of being among the most researched and least understood people in the United States, if not the world. Rodriguez\u27s use of the existing voluminous literature on the Puerto Rican experience certainly reinforces this widely held belief. Puerto Ricans are the second largest Latino ethnic group in the United States, and in New York City one out of every eight people is Puerto Rican. This is a remarkable statistical finding, especially when one considers that most non-Puerto Ricans remain culturally illiterate about the history, migration, education, politics and daily life of this struggling community. So, it may well be true that while volumes of research studies sit on the shelves of our educational institutions, most Americans remain woefully ignorant about who the Puerto Ricans really are, and why so many continue to be scattered in barrios throughout the fifty states, including Hawaii