Post: The Quagmire of My Lai and Thanh Phong Due: Sunday, May 2 If soldiers didn’t follow orders, military actions would be chaos. Yet as human beings, one would like to think we all have built-in moral compasses. Question is:......more.
Vietnam Veterans Against the War Statement by John Kerry to the Senate Committee of Foreign Relations April 23, 1971 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I would like to talk on behalf of all those veterans and say that several months ago in Detroit we......more.
April 25, 2001 New York Times Sunday Magazine One Awful Night in Thanh Phong By GREGORY L. VISTICA Senator Bob Kerrey's hands trembled slightly as he began to read six pages of documents that had just been handed to him.......more.
Should We Bomb? Ever? (due Mon. Apr 5) Readings: • Excerpt from Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument (New York: Basic Books, 1977), pp. 255-263. • Excerpt from W.G. Sebald, On the Natural History of Destruction (London:......more.
The Ghosts of Rwanda (due Sunday, April 4) In the PBS Frontline program The Ghosts of Rwanda, it's clear that many, many people saw what was happening in front of them and several made the decision to do something about......more.
Reading: Samantha Power, "A Problem from Hell", chapter 10 on Rwanda Now that you’ve read chapter 10 of Samantha Power’s book, seen The Triumph of Evil, and (in some cases) heard Lt Gen Romeo Dallaire (with Samantha Power and Michael......more.
Reading and Post: Japan, The War, and the Rape of Nanking (due Friday, March 19, 2004) Readings: Excerpt from Iris Chang’s The Rape of Nanking (1997), published in Newsweek, December 1, 1997. http://www.learntoquestion.com/class/log/archives/000363.html David W. Chen, “At the Rape of......more.
"Exposing the Rape of Nanking" from Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II (New York: Basic Books, 1997) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE CHRONICLE OF humankind's cruelty is a long and sorry tale. But if it is......more.
Doreen Carvajal, "History's Shadow Foils Nanking Chronicle," The New York Times, May 20, 1999 More than a half-century after the Japanese invasion of the ancient Chinese city of Nanking, a tense international literary tug of words has flared over the......more.
David W. Chen, "At the Rape of Nanking: A Nazi Who Saved Lives" The New York Times, December 12, 1996 When the invading Japanese Army overran the Nationalist Chinese capital in December 1937, soldiers embarked on a two-month rampage of......more.
Post: Simon Wiesenthal and The Sunflower: A Question of Forgiveness Due: Monday, March 15 Simon Wiesenthal, as we learned in the film and in the book The Sunflower, certainly had a dilemma. In the book, Wiesenthal asks: Was my silence......more.
Reading and Post: The Nature of Rescue and Resistance Due: Thursday, March 11, 2004 Each of you has been given written material about a particular act of rescue or resistance. Read the selection you’ve been given. If you are......more.
Assignment: Human Rights Abuses in “Your” Country: Capturing the Attention of Ordinary Americans Due: Monday, March 8 (in class) In class last week, you began to sketch out with your “Human Rights group” partners an advertisement and/or billboard to get......more.
Reading and Post: America and the Holocaust Due: Wednesday, February 25 (for those of you going to Blue Man Group, Thursday, February 26) Reading: Samantha Power, “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide, chapters 2 and 3......more.
b>Reading: Excerpt from Christopher Browning’s book, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (distributed in class, not available online). Reading Christopher Browning’s text on the Józefów massacre—a chapter of his book, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police......more.
Post: Taking a Look at Your Colleagues Human Rights Projects Due: Wednesday, January 28 I would like you to go into the galleries on the learntoquestion site (www.learntoquestion.com/class/galleries) and click on “Facing History 03-04” and then “Human Rights Projects.” Select......more.
When you see a swastika, what do you think? Do you have a different reaction when you view a swastika in a book or in a photograph than you do when you see it “live”? Why does this form evoke......more.
Post: A Response to Hitler’s 1919 Statement Due: Wednesday, January 21 Tonight, I’d like you to read Hitler’s earliest known political writing. This was originally written in letter form. Then imagine the following: you are a German citizen in 1919.......more.
Your task is to imagine that you are an ordinary Jean or Johann in 1919, responding to the news of the Treaty. Imagine you are a German worker living in Munich at the end of World War I, reading the......more.
Web search and Post: The Armenian Genocide Due: Thursday, January 8 In this exercise, you and a partner are going to look at the Armenian genocide, which resulted in the murder of approximately 1.5 million Armenian Christians living in the......more.
Bolsheviks, Commies, Spartacists (we’ll hear about these soon in Germany), Wobblies (that’s a US version)…whatever you want to call him, folks sure were worried about them. People throughout Europe (and the U.S.) were truly concerned about events in the newly-named......more.
Assignment: Life in 1900 (due Monday December 22 in class) We will begin on Monday to explore how the world looked very different between 1900 and 1914 than it does today. It's important for you to construct an image of......more.
Post: The Black Man’s Burden: The Exploitation of the Congo (due Sunday night, December 21) For Friday, you read Adam Hochschild’s disturbing and unsettling account of what happened to the Congolese people when they were ruled by King Leopold of......more.
Reading and Post: The U.S. and the Allies Observe The Armenian Genocide Due: Monday, January 5, 2004 Read: Chapter 1, from Samantha Power’s book, “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide (New York: Basic Books, 2001). Read......more.
School Scarf ban backed in France: Official report calls for a law to forbid visible signs of religious faith in schools. Elaine Sciolino/NYT, International Herald Tribune, Friday, December 12, 2003 PARIS As Europe struggles with the integration of its rising......more.
If you read the article that follows (from this past Friday’s issue of the International Herald Tribune), you will discover that the French government is considering some sweeping changes with respect to religion in the nation. In an effort to......more.
Hussein Likely to Face Iraqi-Led Tribunal NEIL A. LEWIS, New York Times, December 14, 2003 WASHINGTON, Dec. 14 — After United States officials finish interrogating Saddam Hussein, he will probably become the principal defendant before a special Iraqi-led criminal tribunal......more.
It appears that Saddam Hussein is no longer on the run. US military succeeded in capturing him yesterday. As in most of the horrific episodes in twentieth-century history, now the question (and you’ll see something about this in the article......more.
Go to: http://www.npr.org/display_pages/features/feature_1529391.html This is a story on NPR’s Morning Edition from Wednesday, December 3, 2003 (how timely!) on European anti-Semitism. Follow the links on this page to the “Morning Edition audio.” Click on that. Depending on your computer, you......more.
Today you heard from Hillary Krieger, Boston Latin class of 1994, ex-editor-in-chief of The Argo, and presently a reporter for The Jerusalem Post. Talk about living in a war zone—Hillary is doing it, and yet she is pragmatic and somewhat......more.
We live in a such a tolerant, politically-correct society, yes? And history books contain the truth, yes? And when people write things down, they are always true, yes? There’s a reason why we named the website for FHAO “learn to......more.
Now that you’ve seen the film about Stanley Milgram’s experiment at Yale, you know that ordinary people are capable of doing startling things out of obedience to someone or some sort of idea. Often we would identify these folks at......more.
I hope your colleagues told you how hard they worked on this production. They are to be congratulated! Please tell them. On the website discussion board, under the category of “All classes,” I have set up several threads for you......more.
Reading and Post: Eugenics and the Link to the SATs Due: Monday, November 24 Your assignment tonight is to read two groundbreaking articles, later turned into an equally important book, by Nicholas Lemann. The book is called The Big Test:......more.
To deepen your understanding of eugenics in New England, I’d like you to read a bit more about what happened here. Please read: Welling Savo, “The Master Race,” Boston Magazine, December 2002 http://www.bostonmagazine.com/special1/eugenics_1202.shtml On the eugenics laws that were applied......more.
Your assignment tonight is to read two groundbreaking articles, later turned into an equally important book, by Nicholas Lemann. The book is called The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy (published 1999). These articles, “The Structure of......more.
Note: We will begin this in class today, but you are to finish whatever you do not complete in class, you are to complete for homework. Today we are going to take a look at the records of one of......more.
Find one or both of your parents OR someone you know who is married. (You are welcome to ask more than 1 person/couple and report your findings for each. Be sure you are comfortable asking them the questions below. Then,......more.
People in Vermont in the 1910s through the 1930s were becoming increasingly concerned about the nature of their population. A growing preoccupation with the number of mentally disabled people in the state led to the passing of a sterilization law,......more.
NO. 174. --: AN ACT FOR HUMAN BETTERMENT BY VOLUNTARY STERILIZATION. [S. 64] It is hereby enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Vermont: SECTION 1. Construction. Henceforth it shall be the policy of the state to prevent......more.
Assignment and Post: Taking a Stand on Homophobic Language (Due Thursday, November 6) FIRST—A REMINDER: TONIGHT’S HOMEWORK (Tuesday, November 4): Watch on PBS 44 at 9 p.m. (check your local television for the proper number, as cable may make the......more.
Homosexuals often seem to be the last bastion of ongoing discrimination. That’s not to say no other group or population faces discrimination, but it’s certainly seen in many circles as unacceptable. Not so with homophobia. What’s with that? Why are......more.
Today in class, you saw some very disturbing scenes documenting hate on the internet. What are your impressions of this film? Are these people just exercising their freedom of speech or do they go beyond that? What responsibilities do the......more.
Emma Lazarus wrote in her famous poem, "The New Colossus," today inscribed on a plaque near the Statue of Liberty: Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.......more.
Reading: Richard Rodriguez, Brown: The Last Discovery of America (New York: Penguin, 2002), chapter V: “Hispanic” Hi.spa’.nick. 1. Spanish, adjective. 2. Latin American, adjective. 3. Hispano, noun. An American citizen or resident of Spanish descent. 4. Ducking under the cyclone......more.
Post: Dirty Water: Race and Boston Due: Monday, October 27 This has been a “not fun” week in Facing History. Talk about disturbing stuff. Welcome to the twentieth century. (Not that previous centuries have been that fabulous either…) Love that......more.
Louise Day Hicks Dies at 87; Led Anti-Busing Effort in Boston By Adam Bernstein Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, October 23, 2003; Page B06 Louise Day Hicks, 87, who tapped into racial and class discontent to become leader of the......more.
You’ve seen some horrific images today. It’s difficult to imagine a society where such images were commonplace and were used as postcard images to be sent to friends. There were folks who objected to lynchings and who tried to do......more.
Randall Kennedy, Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word," (2002) Chapter One: The Protean N-Word How should nigger be defined? Is it a part of the American cultural inheritance that warrants preservation? Why does nigger generate such powerful reactions?......more.
Politics | Debating Reparations with Horowitz and Ogletree By Lee Hubbard Reparations for American blacks was a sideline issue for most African Americans until the publication of Randall Robinson's The Debt. The book helped bring the reparations debate to a......more.
No matter how many times you have seen Amistad or any number of horrific films, read accounts—either firsthand or several times removed—of slavery in this country, you cannot help but be horrified by the violence, the abdication of any sense......more.
Harper's Magazine Nov, 2002 Shelby Steele, "The age of white guilt: and the disappearance of the black individual" One day back in the late fifties, when I was ten or eleven years old, there was a moment when I experienced......more.
HARVARD GAZETTE (November 2002) Has Boston shed its racist reputation? : Panel tackles racism and segregation in Boston By Beth Potier Gazette Staff It's been almost 30 years since buses of black students were pelted with rocks and tomatoes in......more.
Divided We Stand by Doug Most Boston Magazine, November 2002. Is Boston racist? The answer might surprise you. Segregated? Absolutely. And in this town, where blacks and whites have been singing different tunes for years, the two groups are still......more.
In the world of Walt Disney, stereotypes play a big role. On Wednesday in class, we looked at Disney's [i]Aladdin[/i]. It's jazzy, fun, action-packed, and it's got Robin Williams as a genie. What more could you ask for? But is......more.
Abolish the White Race by Noel Ignatiev Race is a biological fiction, but it is a social fact. The white race consists of those who enjoy the privileges of the white skin—freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, the inside track......more.
An excerpt from White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack Peggy McIntosh "I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group" ….I think whites are carefully taught not to......more.
Post: White Privilege: Is there such a thing? Due: Friday, October 10 Readings: Peggy McIntosh, “White Privilege” Noel Ignatiev, “Abolish the White Race” Now that you've read the abridged version of a longer essay by Peggy McIntosh on the concept......more.
Rush Limbaugh spoke his peace about African-American quarterbacks in the NFL. You may also have heard about the radio personality who referred to the gorilla on the loose from the Franklin Park Zoo in Roxbury as a "METCO student waiting......more.
I’d like you to reply to the following questions: What did you discover by painting your assigned partner’s skin color? What was obvious about the exercise? And what was perhaps not so obvious? Post some thoughtful comments about this and......more.
Making Value Judgments (Due Wednesday, October 1) Today in class we judged. We judge all the time. We judge one another, we judge fruits in a supermarket, trying to determine which one to purchase. We judge what looks “good”......more.
“Why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria?” (1999) Beverly Daniel Tatum, Ph.D, professor, Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA In racially mixed settings, racial grouping is a developmental process in response to an environmental stressor, racism.......more.
Why Do People Sit Together in the Cafeteria? Over the next two days, you are to conduct a field study in the BLS dining hall (cafeteria). Here’s how you will do this: • You are to select three different tables......more.
For those of you who heard Al Franken speak this morning, I'd like you to post your responses to what he had to say. Did he make a convincing case for his point of view? Was he fair to the......more.
Today in class, you watched a (slightly corny) film, “Toward a More Perfect Union.” The film, about 10 years old, nevertheless offers some interesting perspectives. (And if you are a Star Trek fan, then who can beat Captain Kirk reading......more.
Today in class, you watched a (slightly corny) film, “Toward a More Perfect Union.” The film, about 10 years old, nevertheless offers some interesting perspectives. (And if you are a Star Trek fan, then who can beat Captain Kirk reading......more.
Does the deliberate killing of 100,000 Iraqi Kurds in 1987-1988 justify our overthrowing Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 2003? You’ve just read Samantha Power’s fascinating chapter on what happened in Iraq at that time. She painstakingly retraces what happened then,......more.
Please read chapter 8 of Samantha Power's "A Problem from Hell" on the 1988 gassing of the Kurdish population by Iraqi forces.......more.
For this post, you are to read an article by Michael Ignatieff, head of the Carr Center for Human Rights at the Kennedy School at Harvard. Ignatieff could sneeze and it would be interesting---but in this case, he has written......more.
Why Are We In Iraq? (And Liberia? And Afghanistan?) By MICHAEL IGNATIEFF New York Times Magazine, Sunday, September 7, 2003 In the back alleys of Iraq, the soldiers from the 101st Airborne and First Armored Divisions are hot, dirty and......more.
Two years ago this week, the World Trade Center was destroyed in a terrorist attack on September 11th. In addition to the loss of life, many felt that key symbols of the United States had been destroyed. The Pentagon, of......more.
As you saw in the clip today, eighteen-year-old David Cash chose to walk away as his friend, fellow eighteen-year-old Jeremy Strohmeyer, assaulted and murdered Sherrice Iverson, age 7, in the girls room of a Nevada casino at 3 in the......more.
Excerpt from James Conroy, Unspeakable Acts, Ordinary People , (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2000). The indifference demonstrated by bystanders in the face of other people's suffering has been widely studied, particularly since the murder of twenty-eight-year-old Kitty Genovese......more.
from 20/20, ABC News Aug. 29, 2003— Often, we rely on the kindness of strangers to help us out in an emergency. But in what circumstances would you help someone, and in what circumstances would you be helped if you......more.
This is a test post to see if you can actually post and that all is working well. Please respond to this thread by answering the following question. No more than a few sentences are necessary. What do you think......more.
Facing History 2003-2004 Dear Facing History students, It’s probably accurate to say that Facing History and Ourselves is unlike most courses you have taken or will take at Boston Latin School. FHAO, as we call it, is a course that......more.