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"The Answer, my Friend, is Blowin' In the Wind..."
- Bob Dylan
A Portal to Mainstream and Alternative Articles and Commentary on Issues of Workplace Inclusion, Ethics, Social Justice, and Enchantment
Articles linked here have been selected because they are thought provoking. They represent a range of opinions and do not necessarily reflect the values and positions of GDI. We may from time to time offer commentary, rebuttals or challenges to specific writings.
The Meaning of Freedom
The Economist. May 10, 2007
In every corner of the Muslim world, female attire is stirring strong emotions.
In the Beginning
The Economist. April 21, 2007
The debate over creation and evolution, once most conspicuous in America, is fast going global.
Andrew Nelson: Diversity or Equality? A Talk With Walter Benn Michaels
The Nation. January 7th, 2007
In his new book The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality, Michaels argues that many of the racial and ethnic identity divides we have grown so comfortable getting upset over have served as a great distraction from our true national crisis, the growing divide between the rich and the poor...But the reason Michaels chooses to tackle this touchy subject is that in his pursuit of a truly just society, Michaels feels that race is not part of the equation.
A child of Bethlehem: No end of history
The Economist. December 23rd, 2006
Since the outbreak of the second Palestinian intifada in autumn 2000, the civilian residents of Christianity's home town have lived through some terrifying moments....Not surprisingly, almost everything that is written about this place notes the contrast between the town's sentimental associations - for the millions of people who mark Christmas with cribs, trees and stars - and the tough, unsentimental realities of daily life in a modern Palestinian community of 60,000.
The Plot Against Equality
The Nation. December 25th, 2006
The Trouble With Diversity is a bracing jeremiad, an all-out assault on the way identity in general, and race in particular, is used to organize society. It is also a thought experiment in which author and literary critic Walter Benn Michaels invites us to remove our race-tinted glasses and view the world in the class-based terms that, he argues, actually define it...By lumping together the categories of race, class and gender--the holy trinity of academic cultural studies--and treating them as different but equal identities, we have decided to manage inequality rather than reduce, much less eradicate, it. For Michaels, this conceptual sleight of hand is nothing less than a crime.
Bagehot: In defence of the young
The Economist. October 26th, 2006
Paying too much attention to the demands of the elderly is dangerous for society.
Barbara Kantrowitz and Julie Scelfo: Science and the Gender Gap
Newsweek. September 25th, 2006
A generation ago, women physicists and chemists were rare in the lab, but their number is increasing every year.
Lexington: Poison Ivy
The Economist. September 23rd, 2006
Not so much palaces of learning as bastions of privilege and hypocrisy.
The brains business
The Economist. September 8th, 2005
Mass higher education is forcing universities to become more diverse, more global and much more competitive, says Adrian Wooldridge.
Edward O. Wilson: Back from Chaos (excerpt)
The Atlantic Monthly.
Enlightenment thinkers knew a lot about everything, today's specialists know a lot about a little, and postmodernists doubt that we can know anything at all. One of the century's most important scientists argues, against fashion, that we can know what we need to know, and that we will discover underlying all forms of knowledge a fundamental unit.
For complete article, Click Here
Art Kliener: Diversity and Its Discontents
strategy+business. Spring 2004
Diverse workplaces require emotional maturity, and that means confronting "rankism."
John Buell: Torture and the Hidden Injuries of Class
Bangor Daily News. June 29, 2004
Even the mainstream media now wonder how far up the chain of command the Iraq torture scandal goes. If low-level guards are to serve prison terms, what is to happen to officers who authorized or at least must have known of these abuses? If military rank should occasion further questions, so should class.... Over the years jingoism and racism have been deeply implicated in actions of some white American working class citizens, actions that merit sanctions. Nonetheless, working-class schools, local communities, workplaces and governments are often guilty of encouraging moral passivity. At their best, many fail to support more generous understandings of other cultures and even of oneself.
Salle Engelhardt: On the Gay Marriage Amendment, a Control-Freak Issue?
Common Dreams. July 15, 2004
I would like to elaborate on the idea of religion and marriage since the definitions seem to be a little blurry for many of those elected folks in DC. ... There are multiple religions practiced in our midst but there appear to be some folks in the DC factions that can't accept that there are numerous religions that do not subscribe to their accustomed set of practices. The First Amendment was intended to allow for such diversity in this land. Granted, we've never been very good at consenting to it.
Editorial: The Next Step for CSR: Economic Democracy
Business Ethics. May 2004
Through it all -- as ethical decision-making was taught to MBAs, good companies were sought out for stock portfolios, or descriptions were compiled of best practices -- the underlying assumption was that managers had genuine freedom to be socially responsible. We believed CSR was about separating the good guys from the bad guys, and that good guys could be spotted by their exemplary policies and programs and sustainability reports. But the lessons of the perfect storm tell a different story.
Daniel Lazare: Diversity and Its Discontents
The Nation. May 27th, 2004
In Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity, Samuel Huntington, professor of government at Harvard, contends that if Americans want their country to hold together in the coming decades, they must rededicate themselves not only to a set of founding political beliefs but to a founding culture.,
Ira Chernus: Colonialism Creates Multicultural Society - Like It or Not
It is the inevitable blowback of empire. One country tries to solve its problems by scooping up others, only to find it has inadvertently opened its doors to those others, creating more problems. Then it's time for a big debate about cultural diversity and "the immigration problem"...
Rory Sullivan: Do companies have human rights responsibilities?
OneWorld.net. April 2nd, 2004
Many of the arguments against the extension of human rights obligations to companies are challenged by practice and by policy development. While all stakeholders recognise and emphasise that the primary responsibility is that of governments, there is a growing consensus that companies do have responsibilities for the protection and promotion of human rights.
The War of the Headscarves
The Economist. February 5th, 2004
France and Britain have radically different approaches to ethnic and religious diversity. Each can learn from the other
Paul Krugman: The Death of Horatio Alger
The Nation. January 4th, 2004
The other day I found myself reading a leftist rag that made outrageous claims about America. It said that we are becoming a society in which the poor tend to stay poor, no matter how hard they work; in which sons are much more likely to inherit the socioeconomic status of their father than they were a generation ago. The name of the leftist rag? Business Week...
Karen Armstong: When God Goes To War
Religions Usually Espouse Peace and Goodwill, So Why Have they Sparked So Many Conflicts?...Religion, like any human activity, can be abused. You can have bad religion, as you can have bad cooking, bad art and bad sex. From the very beginning, religion got sucked into conflicts that were originally secular.
Ira Chernus: Pick Your Favorite Jesus
Jesus is the great Rorschach inkblot of Western civilization. Look at him and tell me what you see. Your answer won't tell me any objective truth about who Jesus really was. It will tell me a lot about who you are.
Martin Luther King, Jr.: Letter from Birmingham Jail
A powerful and eloquent statement of the legitimacy of the struggle for justice and equity, the demoralization of marginalization, the obstinance of privilege, and the insidious impediments of complacency. This transcription is from Dr. King's original notes.
John Gray: September 11 - THE END OF GLOBALIZATION
A Diverse World Would Be a Safer World
The atrocities of 11th September have planted a question mark over the very idea of modernity. Is it really the case that all societies are bound, sooner or later, to converge on the same values and view of the world? This may seem a rather academic question but it is actually of some practical importance.
PDF Version Click Here
Racial Prejudice: Thinking About It
Covering Up Prejudice Is Tiring
The Economist. November 22nd 2003
Politeness makes it unacceptable to express prejudice, even if those attitudes are actually there. How hard do people work to overcome a prejudice that they feel but are not allowed to express?
Karen Armstrong: Fundamentalism as a reaction against modernity (from The Battle for God)
One of the most startling developments of the late twentieth century has been the emergence within every major religious tradition of a militant piety popularly known as "fundamentalism." Its manifestations are sometimes shocking. ... It is only a small minority of fundamentalists who commit such acts of terror, but even the most peaceful and law-abiding are perplexing, because they seem so adamantly opposed to many of the most positive values of modern society...
Michael J. Bamshad and Steve E. Olson: Does Race Exist?
Scientific American. November 10th, 2003
The problem is hard in part because the implicit definition of what makes a person a member of a particular race differs from region to region across the globe. Someone classified as "black" in the U.S., for instance, might be considered "white" in Brazil and "colored" (a category distinguished from both "black" and "white") in South Africa.
Peter Edidin: In Changing the Law of the Land, Six Justices Turned to Its History
New York Times Archives. July 20th, 2003
In a supporting brief on behalf of the petitioner in Lawrence v. Texas, the case that was the occasion for the court's momentous decision in June, scholars contended that history taught...that the legal prohibitions against same-sex sodomy derived from 20th-century prejudice, not the enduring attitudes of Western civilization. Their argument won the day...
Eric Foner: Diversity Over Justice
The Nation. July 14th, 2003
Once again, the international interests of the United States have prompted steps toward greater racial equality at home. The result should be applauded. But we should not lose sight of the fact that corporate globalization has had a devastating impact on the black working class by hastening deindustrialization, and that military service offers many nonwhites the opportunity to advance socially only by taking part in wars abroad.
Yossi Shain: For Ethnic Americans, The Old Country Call
Foreign Service Journal. October 2000
For the United States, a nation of immigrants, the meaning of ethnic identity is being transformed. Old nativist fears -- that Americans with emotional ties to their ancestral homelands cannot be fully loyal to the United States -- are rapidly disappearing. Those people once disparagingly called "hyphenated Americans" feel increasingly free to organize and lobby on behalf of the "old country." Even within America's foreign policy establishment, one finds increasing acceptance of the legitimacy of ethnic lobbies and full participation by ethnically identifiable players such as Jews and Cuban-Americans... But what is arguably the most interesting new development is that the flow of political influence is becoming more of a two-way street. American diasporas -- of Arabs, Jews, Armenians, Chinese -- are playing significant roles in their ancestral homelands.
Brad Sears and Alan Hirsch: Children are not harmed when raised by same-sex couples, studies confirm
Los Angeles Times Archives.
April 4th, 2004
Most reviews of the social science research reach the same conclusion: The proposition that children suffer when raised by gay parents is without basis.
Glen Ford and Peter Gamble: Dean Makes Racial Political History
The Black Commentator. December 11th, 2003
Commentary on Howard Dean's December 7 speech at Columbia, South Carolina and implications for the 2004 presidential race and beyond. The commentary is followed by the full text of Dean's speech and contains a number of links to reference materials including Lyndon Johnson's June 4, 1965 commencement speech at Howard University that first articulated the rationale for affirmative action as a national public policy.
Work of their own
U.S. News & World Report. February 23rd, 2003
Women now account for nearly half of the workforce; their trek to get there changed
laws and attitudes affecting all workers.
Manchester is favourite with 'new bohemians'
Ethnic diversity and gay people are key indicators of cities' creative potential, according to new UK creativity index
Race in Brazil
Out of Eden
The Economist. July 3rd 2003 - RIO DE JANEIRO
Brazil's informal racism has not created a popular civil-rights movement of the sort that rallied black and white Americans during the 1960s. Brazilian racism is like a gun at the back of the head rather than one pointed between the eyes...
George Soros: The Capitalist Threat
The Atlantic Monthly
There has been an ongoing conflict between market values and other, more traditional value systems, which has aroused strong passions and antagonisms... Unsure of what they stand for, people increasingly rely on money as the criterion of value...What used to be a medium of exchange has usurped the place of fundamental values, reversing the relationship postulated by economic theory. What used to be professions have turned into businesses. The cult of success has replaced a belief in principles. Society has lost its anchor.
The Crisis Of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered
by George Soros
A Review by WILLIAM GREIDER
The Nation
I think this approach is entirely plausible...It will succeed, however, only if social reality is fully integrated with the rules and mechanisms of a reformed economic system. As Soros himself emphasizes, the two realms of market and society are now treated as separate entities, one based upon raw, unregulated, self-interested energies of commerce and finance, the other on our collective responsibilities to community and one another. Fusion is the great uncharted challenge of our time...
Susan Sturm and Lani Guinier: The Future of Affirmative Action
excerpt
The Boston Review. December 2000 - January 2001
Promoting diversity in education and employment requires us to rethink testing and "meritocracy."
For complete article Click Here
Howard Gardner: Vygotsky to the Rescue!
A response to "The Future of Affirmative Action" by Susan Sturm and Lani Guinier
The Boston Review. December 2000 - January 2001
...(The) same assumptions about assessment dominate every sphere of educational and professional life. From admission to independent school to admission to the bar, from the police force to the teaching force, we assume too blithely that we know the relation between the "entry point" and the "end state." Moreover, we assume too blithely the existence of traits or aptitudes that individuals either possess or lack...
Manuel Castells: End of Millennium (excerpts)
The whirlwind of globalization is triggering defensive reaction around the world, often organized around the principles of national and territorial identity...This insecurity is enhanced by the growing multi-ethnicity and multiculturalism of European societies, which trigger racism and xenophobia as people affirm their identity both against a supranational state and against cultural diversification.,,The reconstruction of society's institutions by cultural social movements, bringing technology under the control of people's needs and desires, seems to require a long march from the communes built around resistance identity to the heights of new project identities...
STAKEHOLDER DIALOG 1994
Caught in the Cycle of Overwork
Why is the idea of working less such a heresy to Americans?
Published first in Business Ethics, September/October 1994
This analysis was written in 1994. It raises many issues, just as relelvant today, that have direct pertinence to enchantment and disenchantment in the workplace and the question of an environment where people seek and recognize the best from each other.
NOT AVAILABLE ON THE WEB
Elizabeth Mehren: Mind Over Subject Matter
Los Angeles Times Archives.
April 25th, 2004
Diversity practitioners are often stymied in their work by management assumptions that the bulk of the employee population will not relate to, or even understand, material that requires conceptual or critical thinking. This story illustrates the falacy of such assumptions. Poor women take a crash course in the humanities, helping them open doors with a handle on the language of the elite.
Kati Marton: A Worldwide Gender Gap
Newsweek May 10th, 2004
Women suffer countless disadvantages compared with men. Even after decades of progress, we make up two thirds of the world's 880 million illiterate adults, and up to 70 percent of its poorest citizens. But health remains the cruelest of all inequalities...
Barbara Kantrowitz: State of Our Unions
Newsweek March 1st, 2004
If marriage is in trouble, don't blame gays. Straights changed the rules.
Anna Quindlen: Do as I Say, Not as I Do
Newsweek
January 5th, 2004
For years Thurmond walked around with an enormous contradiction within him. Maybe he forgot...that real power is the power to live openly and allow others to do the same.
Anna Quindlen: Outside the Bright Lines
Newsweek August 11th, 2003
The most dispiriting moment in Jenny Boylan's book is when she realizes that talking like a girl means sounding uncertain about your own name, like this: "Hello? I'm Jenny Boylan?"
The funniest moment is when her doctor tells her that gay men and lesbians don't really have much in common with transsexuals. "Yeah," Boylan replies, "except for the fact that we get beaten up by the same people."
And one of the most telling moments in...
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