John Dewey and the Question of Race: The Fight for Odell Waller

In an attempt to better understand the complexity of American racism and democracy, this paper explores racism through the plight of an African American sharecropper, Odell Waller, and the reaction and involvement of John Dewey, America's most liberal democratic philosopher of the 20th century. This exploration delves into the nature of American justice in one of the most difficult struggles in our history, the late years of the Depression and the early years of World War II. Furthermore, the paper traces Dewey's limited discussion of race and his involvement in attacking racism in American society.

When the North Last Headed South: Revisiting the 1930s

The U.S recession of 2007 to 2009 is unique in the post-World-War-II experience by the broad company it kept. Activity contracted around the world, with the advanced countries of the North experiencing declines in spending normally the purview of the developing economies of the South. The last time that the economies of the North similarly headed south was the 1930s. This paper examines the role of policy in fostering recovery in that decade. With nominal short-term interest rates already near zero, monetary policy in most countries took the unconventional step of delinking currencies from the gold standard. However, analysis of a sample that includes developing countries shows that this was not as universally effective as often claimed, perhaps because the exit from gold was uncoordinated in time, scale, and scope and, in many countries, failed to bring about a substantial depreciation against the dollar. Fiscal policy was also active in the 1930s—many countries sharply increased government spending—but prone to reversals that may have undermined confidence. Countries that were more consistent in keeping spending high tended to recover more quickly.

By How Much Does GDP Rise If the Government Buys More Output?

During World War II and the Korean War, real GDP grew by about half the amount of the increase in government purchases. With allowance for other factors holding back GDP growth during those wars, the multiplier linking government purchases to GDP may be in the range of 0.7 to 1.0, a range generally supported by research based on vector autoregressions that control for other determinants, but higher values are not ruled out. New Keynesian macro models have multipliers in that range as well. On the other hand, neoclassical models have a much lower multiplier, because they predict that consumption falls when purchases rise. The key features of a model that delivers a higher multiplier are (1) the decline in the markup ratio of price over cost that occurs in those models when output rises, and (2) the elastic response of employment to an increase in demand. These features alone deliver a fairly high multiplier and they are complementary to another feature associated with Keynes, the linkage of consumption to current income. Multipliers are higher|perhaps around 1.7|when the nominal interest rate is at its lower bound of zero, as it was during 2009.

Remembering the <i>Tirailleurs Sénégalais</i> and the Great War: Oral History as a Methodology of Inclusion in French Colonial Studies

Pendant la Première Guerre mondiale plus que 140 000 Ouest-Africains ont été recrutés dans l'armée française de force et ont servi comme combattants en Europe. Cet essai examine un aspect crucial de cette unique rencontre interculturelle: la manière de commémorer les soldats de cette guerre. Ce thème est exploré dans trois contextes temporels et interprétatifs: (1) représentations coloniales françaises au sujet du rôle des Africains en temps de guerre antérieur à 1960, (2) les conventions françaises d'autrefois qui sont mises en question par les historiens des années 1960 à la fin des années 1980, et (3) la révélation des hommes derrière les masques du mythe colonial pendant les quinze ans précédents. L'accent de la dernière section sera mise sur la contribution de l'histoire orale à révéler-après presque 75 années de silence-contre-interprétations africains au sujet de leurs expériences en temps de guerre. En faisant ainsi cet essai illustre des tendances récentes dans l'historiographie interculturelle et dans l'interprétation du passé colonial franco-africain en général.

"Definitional Traps" and Misleading Titles

The International Criminal Court, the Security Council, and the Politics of Impunity in Darfur

This article analyzes the political challenges confronting the International Criminal Court (ICC) in its efforts to bring war crimes suspects to trial in connection with mass atrocities committed in the Darfur region of Sudan. It chronicles and examines the battles over cooperation between the ICC and the defiant Sudanese government that have forestalled the handover of suspects such as Sudanese president Omar Hassan al-Bashir. It also seeks to explain why the Security Council, in its ambivalence toward the ICC, has not vigorously pressed Sudan to fulfill its legal obligation to cooperate.

The UN International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur: New and Disturbing Findings

Following a US referral of the Darfur crisis to the United Nations, the UN undertook the UN Commission of Inquiry into Darfur. In late January 2005, following an analysis of the data collected by the UN’s COI team, the UN declared that while it found crimes against humanity had been committed by the government of Sudan (GoS) and the Janjaweed (Arab militia), it did not find evidence that the GoS had perpetrated genocide. Herein, Samuel Totten, argues that a correct analysis of the data collected by the COI team would have been genocide. In addition to offering a critique of the COI’s analysis, Totten is critical of the hurried, unsystematic, and underfunded investigation.

Government and Science: The Unitary Executive versus Freedom of Scientific Inquiry

President Barack Obama pledged in his inaugural address to "restore science to its rightful place" and promised that federal policy would be informed by "the most complete, accurate, and honest scientific information." (1) The president joined a chorus of condemnation against the Bush administration's "war on science," ranging from former surgeon generals, senior agency scientists, and the Union of Concerned Scientists to the General Accountability Office and Congress. Showing respect for science is not only crucial to affirming democratic ideals of openness and freedom of inquiry. It is also essential to the long-term well-being of society, which benefits from scientific research and innovation. During the Bush administration, once-strong, independent agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Institutes of Health came under political influence perhaps more than at any other time in history, threatening the effectiveness and credibility of the executive branch. Consider three examples: In 2006, the GAO revealed that the Bush administration had spent over $1.6 billion in a two-year span on public relations, including payments to columnists, media firms, and networks to editorialize in favor of the administration's policies. (2) The Department of Health and Human Services, the Office of National Drug Control Policy, and the FDA distributed prepackaged news clips to promote Medicare reform and antidrug messages and to warn consumers not to buy prescription drugs from Canada. Other reports placed the government in a favorable light on issues ranging from childhood obesity and drunk driving to preservation of the environment. The GAO found that federal agencies violated a congressional ban on "covert propaganda." (3) Also in 2006, a DHHS appropriations act required that scientific information "shall be transmitted [to Congress] uncensored and without delay." (4) But in his "signing statement," President Bush affirmed his power to "to withhold information that could impair the workings of the executive branch." The American Bar Association called this--and the other 750-plus presidential signing statements declaring an intent not to enforce legislation (including a torture ban, protection of whistleblowers, and the independence of an Institute of Education Sciences)--"contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional system." (5) In 2004 and 2005, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) reported that the Bush administration systematically distorted scientific fact in the service of policy goals on the environment, health, and biomedical research. (6) Illustrations included the FDA delaying approval of emergency contraceptives against the advice of staff scientists and two independent advisory panels, the DHHS obscuring scientific evaluation of abstinence-only education and pressuring scientists to promote abstinence, the CDC altering its Web site to raise doubts about the effectiveness of condoms in preventing HIV transmission, and the EPA undermining climate change science by suppressing reports and publicly misrepresenting scientific consensus. Health officials even concealed scientific evidence that social and racial disparities affect health care. In some instances, one might give a nod to the government's benign intentions (antidrug messages on television, for example), but does beneficence justify deceit? In other instances, the government's suppression or disregard of science seemed coldly calculated to buttress its political ideology or favor special interests. Above all, transparency and honesty are essential in setting and enforcing health policy. The public expects the state to listen carefully, be objective, and promote the common good. Constitutional Freedoms of Scientists President Bush justified political control over science on a theory of a "unitary executive," according to which the president holds a tight grip on federal policy. …

Plan B and the Doctrine of Double Effect

“We Live in a Country Where Nothing Makes any Difference”: The Queer Sensibility of <i>A Farewell to Arms</i>

This essay argues that a queer sensibility is central to A Farewell to Arms, underwriting the connections between the characters, including the desire that binds Catherine and Frederic. This sensibility is informed by changing views—some of them quite radical for the time—about marriage, homosexuality, and prostitution, but it also challenges gender and sexual norms of the 1920s and even today. The novel’s emphasis on the queer (defined here as the “anti-normal”) reveals that it seeks to invent new forms of relationships that might outlast the chaos of war and overturn repressive societal dictates regarding sexual expression.