A Straight Path: Studies in Medieval Philosophy and Culture; Essays in Honor of Arthur Hyman

R. James Long is a co-editor as well as a contributing author, Richard Fishacre\u27s Way to God pp. 174-82. Book description: Collected to honor the scholarship of Arthur Hyman over the past thirty years, the twenty-three articles of this volume are original contributions by established scholars of medieval philosophy. . . --Journal of the History of Philosophyhttps://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/philosophy-books/1001/thumbnail.jp

Toward an Anti-Racist Curriculum: Incorporating Art into Medical Education to Improve Empathy and Structural Competency

Background: There is an urgent need for medical school curricula that address the effects of structural influences, particularly racism, on health, healthcare access, and the quality of care for people of color. Underrepresented racial minorities in the United States receive worse health care relative to their White counterparts. Structural competency, a framework for recognizing and understanding social influences on health, provides a means for understanding the structural violence that results from and perpetuates racism in classroom and clinical education. Some medical schools have incorporated art into their curricula to increase empathy generally, yet few programs use art to address racial disparities in medicine specifically.Objective:?Can We Talk About Race?? (CWTAR) aims to increase medical students? empathy for racial minorities and increase the ease and ability of students to address racial issues. CWTAR also provides a unique context for ongoing conversations about racism and structural inequality within the health care system. Methods: Sixty-four first-year medical students were randomly selected to participate in CWTAR. The on-campus Ackland Art Museum staff and trained student facilitators lead small group discussions on selected artworks. A course evaluation was sent to all participants consisting of 4 questions: (1) Likert scale rating the quality of the program, (2) the most important thing learned from the program, (3) any differences between discussion at this program versus other conversations around race, and (4) suggestions for changes to the program. Free text responses were content coded and analyzed to reveal common themes.Results:Out of 64 students, 63 (98%) responded to at least one course evaluation question. The majority (89%) of participants rated the program quality as either "Very Good" or "Excellent." Of the 37 students who responded to the free text question regarding the most important thing they learned from the program, 16 (44%) responses revealed students felt that they were exposed to perspectives that differed from their own, and 19% of respondents reported actively viewing a subject through another?s perspective. Of the 33 students who responded to the free text question regarding any differences between discussion at this program versus other conversations around race, 48% noted an increased comfort level discussing race during the program. A common theme in responses to the question regarding suggested changes to the program was a more explicit connection to medicine in the discussion around race.Conclusions:Student responses to CWTAR suggest that the program is effective in engaging students in discussions of racial issues. More investigation is needed to determine whether this methodology increases empathy among medical students for racial minorities specifically

Framing the Narrative: Female Fighters, External Audience Attitudes, and Transnational Support for Armed Rebellions

Female combatants play a central role in rebel efforts to cultivate and disseminate positive narratives regarding the movement and its political goals. Yet, the effectiveness of such strategies in shaping audience attitudes or generating tangible benefits for the group remains unclear. We propose and test a theory regarding the channels through which female fighters advance rebel goals. We argue that female fighters positively influence audience attitudes toward rebel groups by strengthening observers’ beliefs about their legitimacy and their decision to use armed tactics. We further contend that these effects directly help them secure support from transnational non-state actors and indirectly promote state support. We assess our arguments by combining a novel survey experiment in two countries with analyses of new cross-national data on female combatants and information about transnational support for rebels. The empirical results support our arguments and demonstrate the impact of gender framing on rebel efforts to secure support

Spreading the empire of free education, 1865-1905

In the years between the conclusion of the Civil War and the start of the twentieth century, the United States acquired the Alaskan Territory, Hawaii, Guam, Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. As the federal territory moved beyond its contiguous frontier and the United States incorporated different populations into its broader domain, educators championed schooling as a solution to the problems of territorial expansion and developed educational policies and practices which would, they believed, graft American political, social, cultural and economic ideals onto the children of the new possessions. Drawing on a range of domestic models and utilizing a shifting array of domestic partners, federal education officials built schools and school systems for these new territories. Focusing on networks of federal education officials and the schooling projects they implemented in Alaska, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, my dissertation finds that as U.S. educators responded to changing political and cultural conditions both within the United States and the new possessions, they created an ad hoc and largely decentralized educational apparatus for the new populations under their control. Measured against almost every marker of school performance U.S. officials used at the time, however, the United States\u27 efforts to establish systems of schooling for its new possessions were, at best, only marginally successful. One vital reason for this failure was the resistance of the targeted populations, but a more fundamental problem existed within the structure of the state itself. The very partnerships that enabled the federal government\u27s expansion of schooling rendered the government dependent upon networks of allies and weakened the development of a centralized colonial apparatus. Moreover, the inherent localism of American public education was fundamentally at odds with the kind of centralized power required of colonial rule and impeded educators\u27 efforts to transplant U.S. school systems onto newly American soil. My dissertation argues that colonialism exposed the cracks in the infrastructure of American schooling and the weakness of the federal government as an agent of its own empire

Waging War among Civilians: The Production and Restraint of Counterinsurgent Violence in the Second Intifada

Theories of violence against civilians in conflict have tended to view combatants in homogenous terms, as the obedient pawns of military elites, or as uniformly prone to violence due to passionate emotions or economic opportunism. In contrast, this study shows that combatant participation in violence is variable: While in some circumstances soldiers embrace violence eagerly, in others they attempt to shirk it or refuse to commit it outright. What accounts for this variation in violence and restraint? Why are some individuals, and some combat units, more likely to act violently than others? This dissertation examines these questions through a study of Israeli soldiers in the Second Intifada, employing interview, survey, and observational data. The core argument is that variation in combatant violence and restraint is a consequence of organizational control within the military. Drawing on theories in organizational and management studies, I define organizational control broadly to include not only formal mechanisms such as rules, discipline, and enforcement, but also informal mechanisms, such as the inculcation of values, norms, and beliefs through training and leadership. Through organizational control, the military seeks to align the preferences and beliefs of combatants regarding the use of violence with those of military leaders, ensuring that combatants both produce the violence demanded of them (strategic violence) and at the same time do not surpass or subvert such violence so that it no longer serves military interests but their own (opportunistic violence). I show that effective organizational control leads to participation patterns consistent with the preferences of armed group leaders - maximal participation in strategic violence and minimal participation in opportunistic violence. In contrast, weak control leads to participation patterns inconsistent with the preferences of armed group leaders - reduced participation in strategic violence and increased participation in opportunistic violence. When leader preferences are uncertain and control is ambiguous, new, entrepreneurial forms of violence emerge from the military's lower levels