Fourteen Points for the Twenty-First Century


Book Description

When the United States entered World War I, President Woodrow Wilson declared to Congress that the objective was not merely to bring "a new balance of power," but rather to bring a "just and secure peace" to the world by the end of the conflict. In this famous speech, known as "The Fourteen Points," Wilson offered the world a road map toward a more equitable international system in the midst of unprecedented global conflict, including ideas on the interconnectedness of democracy, trade, and the concept of a forum for peaceably resolving international disputes. Even decades after the end of the First World War, Wilson's ideas remained important and influenced many of his successors. But now, in the twenty-first century, there are forces at work in the world that Wilson could never have imagined, and those forces call for a new plan toward peace. In Fourteen Points for the Twenty-First Century: A Renewed Appeal for Cooperative Internationalism, Richard H. Immerman and Jeffrey A. Engel bring together a diverse group of thinkers who take up Wilson's call for a new world order by exploring fourteen new directions for the twenty-first century. The contributors—scholars, policymakers, entrepreneurs, poets, doctors, and scientists—propose solutions to contemporary challenges such as migration, global warming, health care, food security, and privacy in the digital age. Taken together, these points challenge American leaders and policymakers to champion an international effort, not to make America great again, but to work cooperatively with other nations on the basis of mutual respect.




Fourteen Points for the Twenty-First Century


Book Description

When the United States entered World War I, President Woodrow Wilson declared to Congress that the objective was not merely to bring "a new balance of power," but rather to bring a "just and secure peace" to the world by the end of the conflict. In this famous speech, known as "The Fourteen Points," Wilson offered the world a road map toward a more equitable international system in the midst of unprecedented global conflict, including ideas on the interconnectedness of democracy, trade, and the concept of a forum for peaceably resolving international disputes. Even decades after the end of the First World War, Wilson's ideas remained important and influenced many of his successors. But now, in the twenty-first century, there are forces at work in the world that Wilson could never have imagined, and those forces call for a new plan toward peace. In Fourteen Points for the Twenty-First Century: A Renewed Appeal for Cooperative Internationalism, Richard H. Immerman and Jeffrey A. Engel bring together a diverse group of thinkers who take up Wilson's call for a new world order by exploring fourteen new directions for the twenty-first century. The contributors—scholars, policymakers, entrepreneurs, poets, doctors, and scientists—propose solutions to contemporary challenges such as migration, global warming, health care, food security, and privacy in the digital age. Taken together, these points challenge American leaders and policymakers to champion an international effort, not to make America great again, but to work cooperatively with other nations on the basis of mutual respect.




Capital in the Twenty-First Century


Book Description

What are the grand dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of capital? Questions about the long-term evolution of inequality, the concentration of wealth, and the prospects for economic growth lie at the heart of political economy. But satisfactory answers have been hard to find for lack of adequate data and clear guiding theories. In this work the author analyzes a unique collection of data from twenty countries, ranging as far back as the eighteenth century, to uncover key economic and social patterns. His findings transform debate and set the agenda for the next generation of thought about wealth and inequality. He shows that modern economic growth and the diffusion of knowledge have allowed us to avoid inequalities on the apocalyptic scale predicted by Karl Marx. But we have not modified the deep structures of capital and inequality as much as we thought in the optimistic decades following World War II. The main driver of inequality--the tendency of returns on capital to exceed the rate of economic growth--today threatens to generate extreme inequalities that stir discontent and undermine democratic values if political action is not taken. But economic trends are not acts of God. Political action has curbed dangerous inequalities in the past, the author says, and may do so again. This original work reorients our understanding of economic history and confronts us with sobering lessons for today.




Leadership for the Twenty-First Century


Book Description

This illuminating study critiques the concept of leadership as understood in the last 75 years and looks to the twenty-first century for a reconstructed understanding of leadership in the postindustrial era. More similarities in past decades were found than had been thought; the thread throughout Rost's book is that leadership was conceived of as good management. He develops a new definition and paradigm for leadership in this volume that distinguishes leadership from management in fundamental ways. The ethics of leadership from a postindustrial perspective completes the paradigm. The book concludes with suggestions that can be immediately utilized in helping to transform our understanding of leadership.




Woodrow Wilson


Book Description

The first major biography of America’s twenty-eighth president in nearly two decades, from one of America’s foremost Woodrow Wilson scholars. A Democrat who reclaimed the White House after sixteen years of Republican administrations, Wilson was a transformative president—he helped create the regulatory bodies and legislation that prefigured FDR’s New Deal and would prove central to governance through the early twenty-first century, including the Federal Reserve system and the Clayton Antitrust Act; he guided the nation through World War I; and, although his advocacy in favor of joining the League of Nations proved unsuccessful, he nonetheless established a new way of thinking about international relations that would carry America into the United Nations era. Yet Wilson also steadfastly resisted progress for civil rights, while his attorney general launched an aggressive attack on civil liberties. Even as he reminds us of the foundational scope of Wilson’s domestic policy achievements, John Milton Cooper, Jr., reshapes our understanding of the man himself: his Wilson is warm and gracious—not at all the dour puritan of popular imagination. As the president of Princeton, his encounters with the often rancorous battles of academe prepared him for state and national politics. Just two years after he was elected governor of New Jersey, Wilson, now a leader in the progressive movement, won the Democratic presidential nomination and went on to defeat Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft in one of the twentieth century’s most memorable presidential elections. Ever the professor, Wilson relied on the strength of his intellectual convictions and the power of reason to win over the American people. John Milton Cooper, Jr., gives us a vigorous, lasting record of Wilson’s life and achievements. This is a long overdue, revelatory portrait of one of our most important presidents—particularly resonant now, as another president seeks to change the way government relates to the people and regulates the economy.




Terror and Consent


Book Description

The wars against terror have begun, but it will take some time before the nature and composition of these wars is widely understood. The objective of these wars is not the conquest of territory, or the silencing of any particular ideology, but rather to secure the necessary environment for states to operate according to principles of consent and make it impossible for our enemies to impose or induce states of terror. Terror and Consent argues that, like so many states and civilizations in the past that suffered defeat, we are fighting the last war, with weapons and concepts that were useful to us then but have now been superseded. Philip Bobbitt argues that we need to reforge links that previous societies have made between law and strategy; to realize how the evolution of modern states has now produced a globally networked terrorism that will change as fast as we can identify it; to combine humanitarian interests with strategies of intervention; and, above all, to rethink what 'victory' in such a war, if it is a war, might look like - no occupied capitals, no treaties, no victory parades, but the preservation, protection and defence of states of consent. This is one of the most challenging and wide-ranging books of any kind about our modern world.




Japan's Foreign Policy in the Twenty-First Century


Book Description

This edited collection analyzes the innovative changes in Japan’s foreign policy. Pursuing new relationships with South Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe, Japanese initiatives include regional peace-building and human security activities, Asian multilateralism, and the Indo-Pacific concept. This collection focuses on these evolving international relationships through Japan’s unique approach to political change and continuity.




Twenty-First-Century Jim Crow Schools


Book Description

How charter schools have taken hold in three cities—and why parents, teachers, and community members are fighting back Charter schools once promised a path towards educational equity, but as the authors of this powerful volume show, market-driven education reforms have instead boldly reestablished a tiered public school system that segregates students by race and class. Examining the rise of charters in New Orleans, Chicago, and New York, authors Raynard Sanders, David Stovall, and Terrenda White show how charters—private institutions, usually set in poor or working-class African American and Latinx communities—promote competition instead of collaboration and are driven chiefly by financial interests. Sanders, Stovall, and White also reveal how corporate charters position themselves as “public” to secure tax money but exploit their private status to hide data about enrollment and salaries, using misleading information to promote false narratives of student success. In addition to showing how charter school expansion can deprive students of a quality education, the authors document several other lasting consequences of charter school expansion: • the displacement of experienced African American teachers • the rise of a rigid, militarized pedagogy such as SLANT • the purposeful starvation of district schools • and the loss of community control and oversight A revealing and illuminating look at one of the greatest threats to public education, Twenty-First-Century Jim Crow Schools explores how charter schools have shaped the educational landscape and why parents, teachers, and community members are fighting back.




Managing for Excellence in the Twenty-First Century


Book Description

Managing for Excellence in the Twenty-First Century: The Total Quality Approach is a seminal book for achieving the much sought-after traits of quality and excellence. The book provides a practical yet philosophical perspective into achieving quality and excellence. Goski brings her combined experiences from industry, academia, and research into a compendium of principles, theories, practices, tools, techniques, and strategies that can provide and support personal and organizational transformation and sustainable growth. Through the search for excellence and sustainability, Goski presents a different functional approach to management using a combination of existing wisdom, theories, and practices to help create and deliver value that meets or exceeds expectations. Managing for Excellence in the Twenty-First Century is a new perspective to make a difference in both your life and work. Managing for Excellence in the Twenty-First Century: The Total Quality Approach is a wonderfully comprehensive resource that explain the concepts, philosophy, and principles of quality management clearly and simply enough that even complete beginners to quality management will be able to understand. But it is also thorough enough that those with previous experience in quality management will still gain insights. It presents an expos of the concept of quality from a practical point of view and discusses the differences between management and quality management approaches of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The analysis of theories is backed by case examples, and careful attention is given to the limitations of existing theories, standards, and practices. The book also brings to the readers attention their innate power to make a difference and be original through the influence of creativity and innovation. The book also stresses the importance of the values of customer satisfaction, learning, leadership, and adaptation, with the view of improving continually. The book also draws readers attention to some cultural shifts of the twenty-first century and provides insight into how to change with the times by focusing on digital fluency, among other strategies. The book provides a good text for teaching at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. It covers areas like the philosophy of quality management, the purpose of existence, the evolution of quality-management principles, and the lessons to be learned from the various shifts in management practices. It also includes a discussion of the philosophy of excellence, the concept of quality and management, people management, and the relevance of technology and social media in achieving excellence in contemporary times as well as strategies for achieving excellence in contemporary times.




Simone Weil for the Twenty-First Century


Book Description

This in-depth study examines the social, religious, and philosophical thought of Simone Weil. Simone Weil for the Twenty-First Century presents a comprehensive analysis of Weil’s interdisciplinary thought, focusing especially on the depth of its challenge to contemporary philosophical and religious studies. In a world where little is seen to have real meaning, Eric O. Springsted presents a critique of the unfocused nature of postmodern philosophy and argues that Weil’s thought is more significant than ever in showing how the world in which we live is, in fact, a world of mysteries. Springsted brings into focus the challenges of Weil’s original (and sometimes surprising) starting points, such as an Augustinian priority of goodness and love over being and intellect, and the importance of the Crucifixion. Springsted demonstrates how the mystical and spiritual aspects of Weil’s writings influence her social thought. For Weil, social and political questions cannot be separated from the supernatural. For her, rather, the world has a sacramental quality, such that life in the world is always a matter of life in God—and life in God, necessarily a way of life in the world. Simone Weil for the Twenty-First Century is not simply a guide or introduction to Simone Weil. Rather, it is above all an argument for the importance of Weil’s thought in the contemporary world, showing how she helps us to understand the nature of our belonging to God (sometimes in very strange and unexpected ways), the importance of attention and love as the root of both the love of God and neighbor, the importance of being rooted in culture (and culture’s service to the soul in rooting it in the universe), and the need for human beings to understand themselves as communal beings, not as isolated thinkers or willers. It will be essential reading for scholars of Weil, and will also be of interest to philosophers and theologians.