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How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York

How the Other Half Lives together with its sequel Battle with the Slum reveal through Riis’s sensationalist prose and photography the appalling living conditions in the Lower East Side of turn-of-the-century New York City.

Full text here

PC not his forte. I’ve heard more flattering depictions of my peeps:
Thrift is the watchword of Jewtown, as of its people the world over. It is at once its strength and its fatal weakness, its cardinal virtue and its foul disgrace.

Penury and poverty are wedded everywhere to dirt and disease, and Jewtown is no exception. It could not well be otherwise in such crowds, considering especially their low intellectual status.
He is as ready to fight for his rights, or what he considers his rights, in a business transaction—synonymous generally with his advantage—as if he had not been robbed of them for eighteen hundred years. One strong impression survives with him from his days of bondage: the power of the law. On the slightest provocation he rushes off to invoke it for his protection. Doubtless the sensation is novel to him, and therefore pleasing.
Bitter as are his private feuds, it is not until his religious life is invaded that a real inside view is obtained of this Jew, whom the history of Christian civilization has taught nothing but fear and hatred.

As scholars, the children of the most ignorant Polish Jew keep fairly abreast of their more favored playmates, until it comes to mental arithmetic, when they leave them behind with a bound. It is surprising to see how strong the instinct of dollars and cents is in them. They can count, and correctly, almost before they can talk.

A review of Reminiscences & Reflections: A Youth in Germany by Golo Mann.

In his new book, Reminiscences and Reflections, Mann gives an intimate account of Weimar that explores areas more unfamiliar to the modern reader than the well-worn stereotypes of urban glitter and decadence: Berlin figures less prominently than Munich, the town less than the countryside, and the avant-garde less than literary tradition and scholastic institutions.

PBS American Experience: The Great Famine

The little-known story of the American effort to relieve starvation in the new Soviet Russia in 1921, The Great Famine is a documentary about the worst natural disaster in Europe since the Black Plague in the Middle Ages. Five million Soviet citizens died.

Half a world away, Americans responded with a massive two-year relief campaign, championed by Herbert Hoover, director of the American Relief Administration.

PBS American Experience: My Lai Massacre

What drove a company of American soldiers — ordinary young men from around the country — to commit the worst atrocity in American military history? Were they “just following orders” as some later declared? Or, did they break under the pressure of a vicious war in which the line between enemy soldier and civilian had been intentionally blurred? AMERICAN EXPERIENCE focuses on the 1968 My Lai massacre, its subsequent cover-up, and the heroic efforts of the soldiers who broke ranks to try to halt the atrocities, and then bring them to light.

National Honor Society Application

The National Honor Society is an international  service and leadership organization for young scholars. NHS is a reward for student leaders as well as an opportunity to further cultivate leadership skills.

You can learn more about the NHS mission here. You are also encouraged to discuss the JFKS NHS mission with current and former members.

John F. Kennedy School NHS members perform 40 hours of community service. Members are expected to take initiative and to devote themselves to causes about which they truly care. Those not committed to community service should not apply to NHS.

The NHS Selection Process is as follows:

1. Students with a 3.5 grade point average or higher are invited to apply. The application form is below.
2. The JFKS high school faculty rates applicants. The criteria are leadership, character, and service.
3. The five-member JFKS NHS Faculty Council deliberates the qualifications of each candidate and chooses NHS members by majority vote. The NHS Adviser, Mr. Lazar, conducts this meeting but is not a voting member.
4. Applicants are notified with acceptance or rejection letters.
5. New members will partake in an NHS induction ceremony.

Complete this NHS Application and submit it on time.

LSE Lecture: Islam and the Politics of Resistance: the case of women in Iran

Recorded on 16 January 2013 in Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building.

Prominent Muslim feminist and peer Haleh Afshar will speak on the situation facing Iranian women in their country today.
Haleh Afshar (BA York, PhD University of Cambridge) teaches Politics and Women’s Studies at the University of York and serves as a Crossbench Peer in the House of Lords. In 2005 she was awarded an OBE for services to equal opportunities. She is also the Visiting Professor of Islamic Law at the Faculté Internationale de Droit Comparée at Strasbourg. She was born and raised in Iran where she worked as a journalist and a civil servant. She has served as the Chair for the British Association of Middle Eastern Studies and Chair of United Nation Association’s International Services.

Fresh Air: 'Double V': The Fight For Civil Rights In The U.S. Military

In his new book, The Double V: How Wars, Protest and Harry Truman Desegregated America’s Military, author Rawn James Jr. argues that if one wants to understand the story of race in the United States, one must understand the history of African-Americans in the country’s military. Since the country was founded, he tells Fresh Air’s Dave Davies, the military “has continually been forced to confront what it means to segregate individuals according to race.”

Fresh Air interview with James

Russia finally joins WTO

Russia has finally closed the book on its campaign to accede to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), becoming a full member after 18 years of talks – despite the ratification of the accession treaty in the final stages being accompanied by protests from some State Duma deputies and businessmen.

Now that it enjoys the status of a full member of the organisation, Russia is entitled to play its part in formulating the rules for global commerce.

Bidding farewell to its inconspicuous status as an observer, the country will now enjoy lower customs duties, from which Russian exporters of metals and chemicals will be the first to benefit.

Iran Faces Backlash Over "Morality Police" Spying on Coffee Shops

Since last year, the Islamic regime’s Basij forces have been targeting cafes because students and intellectuals meet there to share ideas often deemed “Western.” The Basij are under the command of Iran’s supreme leader and are tasked with carrying out a range of police functions—including suppressing dissident activity and making sure “morals” are not being breached. Previously the Basij were among a group of officers that in 2012 raided a reported 87 restaurants and cafes for “not following Islamic values,” such as by allowing women to smoke pipes in public.

Now, the authorities are turning to a new tactic: surveillance. This became apparent last week, when one of Tehran’s most popular cafes, Café Prague, closed in protest after state officials had tried to force it to install a series of cameras inside its premises.