White Americans are supportive of redistribution to foreigners of African descent, but for prejudicial and paternalistic reasons

Why are so many Americans supportive of giving aid to foreigners – especially in Africa? In new research, Andy Baker finds that Americans are more supportive of giving foreign aid to black foreigners compared to whites. By comparing respondents’ generosity towards blacks and whites in countries with roughly equivalent levels of GDP per capita, he finds that this difference in generosity is down to attitudes of racial paternalism, with Americans considering that black Africans are helpless victims, rather than active agents in their own development outcomes

The Word Became Flesh: An Exploratory Essay on Jesus’s Particularity and Nonhuman Animals

In this exploratory work I argue that Jesus’s particularity as a Jewish, male human is essential for developing Christian theology about nonhuman animals. The Gospel of John says that the Word became “flesh” not that the Word became “human.” By using flesh, John’s Gospel connects the Incarnation to the Jewish notion of all animals. The Gospel almost always uses flesh in a wider sense than meaning human. The Bread of Life discourse makes this explicit when Jesus compares his flesh to “meat,” offending his hearers because they see themselves as above other animals. Other animals are killable and consumable; humans are not. The notion that the Word became flesh has gained prominence in ecotheology, particularly in theologians identifying with deep Incarnation. Unless this notion is connected to Jesus’s particularity, however, there is danger in sacrificing the individual for the whole. We can see this danger in two early theologians, Athanasius and St. John of Damascus. Both of these theologians spoke of the Word becoming “matter.” Yet they ignored Jesus’s Jewishness and rarely focused on his animality, preferring instead to focus on cosmic elements. Consequently they often devalued animal life. Jesus’s Jewishness is essential to the Incarnation. His Jewishness entailed a vision of creation’s purpose in which creatures do not consume one another, but live peaceably by eating plants. This Jewish milieu also entails a grand vision for transformation where predators act peaceably with their former prey. Jesus’s maleness is also connected to his Jewishness. In the Greco-Roman context in which he lived, his circumcision marked him as less male and more animal-like. Moreover, Jesus’s Jewish heritage rejected the idea of a masculine hunter. His theological body was far more transgendered and connected to animality than the Roman ideal. Finally, Jesus’s humanity entails a kenosis of what it means to be human. By becoming-animal he stops the anthropological machine that divides humans from animals. We see this becoming animal most clearly in his identity as a lamb, but also in Revelation’s idea that he is both a lion and a lamb. His eschatological body fulfills the Jewish vision for creation-wide peace

Police, Technique, and Ellulian Critique: Evaluating Just Policing

A chapter by Andy Alexis Baker called Police, technique, and Ellulian critique : evaluating just policing from the book Jacques Ellul on Violence, Resistance, and War edited by Jeffrey M. Shaw and Timothy J. Demy

Factorizations of diffeomorphisms of compact surfaces with boundary

We study diffeomorphisms of compact, oriented surfaces, developing methods of distinguishing those which have positive factorizations into Dehn twists from those which satisfy the weaker condition of right veering. We use these to construct open book decompositions of Stein-fillable 3-manifolds whose monodromies have no positive factorization.Comment: Main results unchanged. Exposition re-worked to reflect referee comment

Leveraging Course Material Affordability Options and Library-Subscribed Materials for Classroom Success

On average 60% of students try to delay or avoid purchasing course materials due to underusage and material costs. Often faculty and administrators try their best to drive student success and affordability through numerous tools and resources available here at NSU. Through the latest trends and opportunities in course materials, and a partnership with the NSU Bookstore and NSU Libraries, ways to drive down cost in materials is a real opportunity. This presentation will discuss the partnership with the NSU Bookstore and NSU libraries to help drive student success, explore opportunities that faculty have to create Open Electronic Resources (OER) and/or acquire OER and library subscribed materials for their classrooms, and how NSU can host OER content within the institutional repository, NSUWorks