163 research outputs found

    Regional Archives in France and Challenges for the American Researcher

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    Before the fifties Americans working on French history generally preferred to conduct research at the national level. Their research underscored intellectual trends of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in that a great number of their monographs centered on national politics, intellectual developments, institutional history, and military and political profiles. Their research interests also reflected their social origins. Many were from prosperous families, perhaps, not far removed from the most influential centers of American political and educational life. Undoubtedly, they interpreted historical events, the making of history, as the business of powerful white men-which was, in the United States, certainly the reality of the time. Their orientation and conceptual framework, of course, contrasted sharply with that of the Annales, the school of French historians who saw the power brokers on top less as movers and shakers, and more as a function of the greater historical forces of climate, geography, economics and culture- all reverberating from below

    Discriminatory Intent and Implicit Bias: Title VII Liability for Unwitting Discrimination

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    Studies consistently show that African Americans face more employment scrutiny and negative employment actions than their white coworkers. Recognizing that much of the explicit racism of the twentieth century has given way to subtle and often unconscious discriminatory biases, this Note argues that current Title VII jurisprudence contains the tools and legal distinctions to provide legal redress for this implicit bias. Discriminatory intent, a requisite showing for plaintiffs bringing Title VII disparate treatment claims, should not be understood to require proof of a particular mental state. Instead, the current law should—and could—simply require that plaintiffs demonstrate a causal link between their membership in a protected class and the adverse employment action that they suffered. Discriminatory actions by employers produce costs for society at large and for individual workers. Employers must therefore pay for the harms they cause, even if the employer did so because of implicit biases. Without employer liability for implicit bias and its discriminatory effects, this Note argues that barriers to equal employment opportunities will persist and victims of discrimination will bear the costs of unfair decisions made by employers

    The etiology of refractive error and methods of reversing or controlling the refractive status of the visual system

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    The etiology of refractive error and methods of reversing or controlling the refractive status of the visual syste

    Recent interannual upper ocean variability in the deep southeastern Bering Sea

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    Recent seasonal and interannual variability of the upper ocean in the southeast Aleutian Basin of the Bering Sea is related to air sea fluxes, ocean advection, and mixing. Between the winter of 2001/2002 and that of 2002/2003 a warming and freshening of the upper ocean was observed in data from a regional array of profiling Conductivity-Temperature-Depth (CTD) floats. The mild winter of 2002/2003 resulted in an unusually warm, fresh, light, and shallow winter mixed layer and a weakly ventilated temperature minimum layer. These unusual winter conditions contributed to a substantial reduction in the subsurface temperature inversion characteristic of the southeast Aleutian Basin. Heat budget analysis, one-dimensional upper ocean model runs, and altimeter sea-surface height anomalies suggest that a combination of atypical ocean advection and anomalous atmospheric forcing contributed to the unusual upper ocean conditions in 2002/2003. The observed warming and disappearance of the temperature minimum in 2002/2003 appears to have preconditioned the water column toward a similar structure in 2003/2004, despite a return to more normal atmospheric forcing

    Poincare Inequalities Under Gauge Transformations

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    For connections on trivial vector bundles compatible with compact gauge groups, we establish conditions on the vector bundle and gauge groupunder which translation of a connection by a constant connection matrixis achievable by a gauge transformation. These conditions may be roughly characterized as either restricting the base manifold to be one-dimensional orrestricting the gauge group to take values in an abelian Lie group.These results are then used to prove Poincare inequalities on the gauge equivalent connection matrices, with some additional refinement of these results when the data considered is compactly supported and Coulomb

    What does it mean to say 'The Criminal Justice System is Racist'?

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    This paper considers three possible ways of understanding the claim that the American criminal justice system is racist: individualist, “patterns’-based, and ideology-based theories of institutional racism. It rejects an individualist explanation of institutional racism because such an explanation fails to explain the widespread prevalence of anti-black racism in this system or indeed in the United States. It considers a “patterns” account of institutional racism, where consistent patterns of disparate racial effect mimic the structure of intentional projects of racial subjugation like slavery or Jim Crow. While a “patterns” account helpfully directs attention to the effects of policies and practices that make up an institution, it does not fully explain the deep roots of anti-blackness in the criminal justice system in the United States. The paper concludes by defending an ideology-based theory of institutional racism for understanding the criminal justice system because the stereotype of the black criminal has a mutually reinforcing relationship with the patterns of disparate outcome for black people in the criminal justice system. This relationship creates a looping effect where the stereotype of the black criminal fuels the disproportionate involvement of black people in the criminal justice system, and the disproportionate representation of black people with felony records, in prisons, brutalized in police encounters, and so on reinforces the idea that black people are especially prone to criminality. Ideological approaches to racism that integrate attention to the patterns of disparate effect best explain what it means to say that the criminal justice system is racist

    Criminal Oppression: A Non-Ideal Theory of Criminal Law and Punishment

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    Thesis advisor: David M. RasmussenThis dissertation defines and defends the concept of ‘criminal oppression.’ Criminal oppression occurs when people are excluded from full participation in important social and political institutions because they are perceived to have violated certain community norms. Oppression is primarily a structural phenomenon, in which practices of formal and informal institutions unjustly harm people based on group membership. In structural oppression, there is rarely an individual who can be said to be responsible for the oppression, but I argue that at times, individuals may also be agents of oppression when they create, perpetuate, or exacerbate structural oppression. Applying this theory of oppression, the criminal justice system in the United States is an oppressive structure that unjustly harms those considered to be ‘criminals’ through a variety of practices. There are three categories of unjust practices: policing, adjudication and punishment, and collateral effects of arrest and conviction. These three categories of practices create the social group ‘criminals’ by subjecting certain people to these kinds of treatments. I use the word ‘criminal’ to describe those who are treated as criminals by police, the courts, and even private individuals like employers. To be a ‘criminal,’ it is not necessary that one has committed a crime or been convicted of a crime. Racial and criminal oppression deeply related historically and conceptually. Nevertheless, they are distinct kinds of oppression. In the United States, those who are not racially oppressed but are ‘criminals’ face many of the same unjust obstacles as those who are racially oppressed in addition to being ‘criminals.’ Some may argue that ‘criminals’ duly convicted of crimes deserve to be socially and politically excluded. But, I argue that the criminal justice system is not properly conceived of as an apolitical institution that can assess moral blameworthiness. Nor should it be able to offer punishments that amount to social and political exclusion. Instead, the criminal justice system is one political institution amongst many, and it ought to be governed by the same principles of liberty and equality that govern other political institutions. Criminal law’s proper function is to facilitate government as a system social cooperation. Therefore, it ought to respond to criminal acts with actions designed to promote inclusion rather than exclusion. Moreover, even if someone has committed a crime, that does not mean that they ought to be subject to violence or permanent second-class status. Finally, I address specific, feminism-driven arguments for using the criminal justice system to fight violence against women. Some feminists argue that the expressivist function of punishment—the ability of punishment to express disapproval and disavowal—makes it a perfect tool for fighting the normalization of violence against women. The problem, they contend, is that this violence is under-punished in the United States, and the solution to ending violence against women is to increase prosecutions and advocate for harsher punishments because punishment will change the social norms and make violence against women rarer. To this, I argue that those who create laws or mete out punishments do not have control over the social meaning of punishment with precision. The historical and present-day oppressive features of criminal law and punishment interfere with the ability of prosecution and punishment to condemn certain types of acts without also condemning people. Thus, feminists who try to use the criminal justice system to fight gender-based violence will find it to be ineffective and potentially harmful to the already oppressed group of ‘criminals.” Chapter 1argues that ‘criminals’ are oppressed using a structural model of oppression that focuses on how collections of institutional policies and practices can create and maintain unjust power relations between groups of people. I will also use an externalist theory of group identity to argue that being arrested or convicted of a crime is not necessary or sufficient for membership in the social group ‘criminal.’ Chapter 2 explains the relationship between racial oppression and the oppression of ‘criminals,’ noting the historical development of the modern prison system. Chapter 3 argues that the proper role of criminal law is to support systems of social cooperation, not to punish pre-political wrongs. I will suggest that criminal law is in essence part of the social contract, not a separate sphere of justice to which distinctive, retributive principles apply. Instead, the criminal law cannot determine moral blameworthiness and is only justified in sanctioning rule violations for the sake of supporting social cooperation in a society whose institutions are worth supporting. In Chapter 4, I propose a feminist, expressivist defense of the use of prosecution and harsh punishment as a response to rape and domestic violence that takes the structural nature of violence against women into account. Chapter 5, however, demonstrates why even this theory cannot justify incarceration in the non-ideal sphere because of the oppressive history and practice of the American criminal justice system.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2020.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Philosophy

    Changes in traditional gender roles for Alaska Natives: their effects on sense of purpose, direction, identity, and family and community stature

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    Thesis (M.A.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2010"In the past century, especially since the 1960s, Alaska Natives have faced rapid cultural and socio-economic change as Western influences have increasingly infiltrated the Native life-ways; since the 1960s social problems, including alcohol abuse, violence, and suicide have plagued Native individuals, families and communities. Arguably, a source of these social problems is the striking shift from clearly defined gender roles for Native adults that guided youth to adulthood in the past to opaque and ambiguous roles for adults that draw on both traditional and Western cultures. Historically, clearly defined gender roles provided youth with the role models necessary for maturing into healthy, productive adults and thereby offered youth a sense of purpose, direction and identity. Today's youth must look for cues in both traditional and Western culture to envision their futures, and with often conflicting value systems and too few strong adult role models to follow, many youth, especially males, are floundering. Healthy adult and elder role models are essential to the well-being of Native youth as they mature into adulthood. The revitalization of mentors, role models and close relationships between adults and youth are critical to future health and well-being of Alaska Native individuals, families and communities"--Leaf iii1. Introduction -- Methodology -- Transcribing, coding and analyzing data -- Findings -- Gender role changes -- Sense of purpose and direction -- Sense of identity -- Family and community stature -- General themes -- Recognition of research participants -- 1. Pre-Contact era -- Introduction -- Identification of men's and women's roles -- Men's traditional roles -- Roles of men in relation to other family members -- Women's traditional roles -- Roles of women in relation to other family members -- Sense of purpose, direction and identity in relation to manhood and womanhood -- Young males -- Young females -- Role models and important influences -- Role models and important influences for males -- Role models and important influences for females -- Role models and important influences among peers -- How role models and important influences shaped the future for youth -- Skill set development -- Traditional education -- Conclusion -- 2. 1730-1850 early contact years and 1850-1900 early transition years -- Introduction -- Overview of thesis argument -- Early contact years : 1730-1850 -- Early influence in Southeast Alaska : 1730-1850 -- Early influence in North and Northwest Alaska : 1790-1850 -- Early transition years : 1850-1900 -- Global context for the dramatic change occurring in Northern Alaska -- 3. 1900-1950 middle transition years -- Introduction -- Education -- Religion -- Wage labor and cash -- Technology : roles of men and women and advancements in technology -- 4. 1950-1980 late transition years -- Introduction -- WWII -- Territory and statewide change -- President Johnson's Great Society Programs -- Education -- Wage labor -- Role models -- Technology : Time, education and adolescence -- 5. 1980-2010 present era -- Introduction -- Education -- Wage labor -- Technology and sports -- Role models and important influences -- Concluding analysis and recommendations -- Conclusion -- References -- Appendix
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