Holocaust Denial: A New Form of Anti-Semitism

Celebrating 15 Years of Judaic Studies at Fairfield University… A Lecture by 2008 Judaic Studies Scholar-in-Residence, Dr. Deborah E. Lipstadt, Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies, Director of the Institute for Jewish Studies, Emory University, Author of Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory; History on Trial; and Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust.https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/bennettcenter-posters/1264/thumbnail.jp

Mental health care and resistance to fascism

Mental health nurses have a critical stake in resisting the right-wing ideology of British fascism. Particularly concerning is the contemporary effort of the British National Party (BNP) to gain credibility and electoral support by the strategic re-packaging of a racist and divisive political manifesto. Evidence that some public sector workers are affiliated with the BNP has relevance for nursing at a series of levels, not least the incompatibility of party membership with a requirement of the Professional Code to avoid discrimination. Progressive advances, though, need to account for deep rooted institutionalized racism in the discourse and practice of healthcare services. The anomalous treatment of black people within mental health services, alongside racial abuse experienced by ethnic minority staff, is discussed in relation to the concept of race as a powerful social category and construction. The murder of the mentally ill and learning disabled in Nazi Germany, as an adjunct of racial genocide, is presented as an extreme example where professional ethics was undermined by dominant political ideology. Finally, the complicity of medical and nursing staff in the state sanctioned, bureaucratic, killing that characterized the Holocaust is revisited in the context of ethical repositioning for contemporary practice and praxis

The twilight of the Liberal Social Contract? On the Reception of Rawlsian Political Liberalism

This chapter discusses the Rawlsian project of public reason, or public justification-based 'political' liberalism, and its reception. After a brief philosophical rather than philological reconstruction of the project, the chapter revolves around a distinction between idealist and realist responses to it. Focusing on political liberalism’s critical reception illuminates an overarching question: was Rawls’s revival of a contractualist approach to liberal legitimacy a fruitful move for liberalism and/or the social contract tradition? The last section contains a largely negative answer to that question. Nonetheless the chapter's conclusion shows that the research programme of political liberalism provided and continues to provide illuminating insights into the limitations of liberal contractualism, especially under conditions of persistent and radical diversity. The programme is, however, less receptive to challenges to do with the relative decline of the power of modern states

Constitutivism

A brief explanation and overview of constitutivism

Assessing the Impact of Holocaust Education on Adolescents’ Civic Values: Experimental Evidence from Arkansas

American adults overwhelmingly agree that the Holocaust should be taught in schools, yet few studies investigate the potential benefits of Holocaust education. We evaluate the impact of Holocaust education on several civic outcomes, including “upstander” efficacy (willingness to intervene on behalf of others), likelihood of exercising civil disobedience, empathy for the suffering of others, and tolerance of others with different values and lifestyles. We recruit students from two local high schools and randomize access to the Arkansas Holocaust Education Conference, where students have the chance to hear from a Holocaust survivor and to participate in breakout sessions with leading Holocaust experts. We find that students randomly assigned to attend the conference become more knowledgeable about the Holocaust and are more willing to act as an upstander on behalf of others. In our subgroup analysis, we find that minority students are significantly more willing to act as an upstander relative to their white peers

Authenticity, authentication and experiential authenticity: telling stories in museums

<p>This article examines how different types of authenticity and authentication work together to inspire museum stories, and personal identification with them, in ways that encourage experiential authenticity. It begins by outlining conceptions of object and existential authenticity and demonstrating how they are bound up with processes of hot and cool authentication. I argue that museums deploy all of these mechanisms to encourage experiences which visitors perceive as authentic. This perspective supports a concept of ‘experiential authenticity’ which connotes the belief and sensations of having experienced something genuine and real. This concept’s value is illustrated by examining storytelling in Anne Frank House. Key museum stories are outlined before exploring how different forms, and degrees, of authenticity and authentication work together to enlist visitor imaginations in the storytelling process and to thereby inspire personal identification as well as embodied connections with them. Four key mechanisms for telling stories are analysed (objects, texts, photographs and videos), and their combined capacity to cultivate experiential authenticity is demonstrated. This is important because experiential authenticity heightens visitor receptivity to museum stories, and is thus both a source and agent of power.</p

Accumulative Extremism: The Post-war Tradition of Anglo-American Neo-Nazi and Anti-Semitic Networks of Support

This essay explores the development of a transnational, Anglo-American neo-Nazi culture from the end of the Second World War to the present day. It stresses that it was the unique friendship between Colin Jordan and George Lincoln Rockwell that fuelled this tradition of cooperation, and plots how their World Union of National Socialists developed a mutual understanding between British and American activists in the 1960s. This survey of an emergent, post-war ‘tradition’ of Anglo-American interaction also highlights how Holocaust denial brought together British and American activists, and the from the 1980s onwards, we see a more complex series of interchanges emerge, including Blood & Honour and Combat 18. The chapter concludes by examining how this ‘tradition’ is now reproduced by a variety of websites

Retóricas del momento : (per)versiones (mis)antropológicas

Durante la organización del XIV Congreso de Antropología celebrado en Valencia en septiembre de 2017, bajo el lema Antropologías en transformación: sentidos, compromisos y utopías, los miembros del comité organizador dudábamos de cuál podría ser el tópico de la conferencia de clausura y qué insigne personalidad de nuestro campo podría ocupar ese lugar privilegiado. Como no teníamos a nadie en cartel ni tampoco osábamos importunar a algún/a colega con tamaña empresa emprendimos la tarea de crear un personaje ad hoc que reuniera el suficiente atractivo en una ocasión tan connotada. En seguida vimos que la idea ofrecía una oportunidad incomparable para reflexionar de forma crítica sobre la academia y el ejercicio de la antropología. Fue así como nació Vicent Artur, doctor en antropología y especialista en universales culturales, emigrado originario y nativo itinerante, universalmente valenciano-malauí y localmente ciudadano del mundo. La ubicación de su nave anclada no fue nada fácil, y la decisión de situarla junto a las aguas del lago Malaui fue con la intención de encontrar un lugar real en el simulacro del mapa, aunque no lo suficientemente rastreable para el común de los académicos, debido a la remota e ignota universidad que se le suponía. Dudamos por las posibles implicaciones etnocéntricas o racistas del invento, pero finalmente optamos por seguir con el plan, ya que nuestro antropólogo era en realidad un malauí de corazón que luchaba allí por su causa académico-profesional como lo podía haber hecho en el centro del imperio. Las ideas que rondan por la conferencia hacen referencia a algunas de las cuestiones de nuestro zeigeist antropológico, como el peso relativo de las discusiones teóricas en el trabajo de campo o el compromiso que adquiere el etnógrafo con lo que considera que son sus causas emancipadoras, que por algo era el lema del congreso. Esperamos que sepan disculpar al profesor Belda si por alguna de aquellas les inoportuna con su tono pseudoprovocador. Si así fuera lo mejor quizás sería tomar nota de las cosas que nos perturban para saber dónde están colocados esos espejos de nuestra alma antropológica