Temple University Press Journals
Not a member yet
549 research outputs found
Sort by
The 2016 Pennsylvania Presidential and U.S. Senate Elections: Breaking Pennsylvania’s Electoral Habits
Get PDFThis article uses pre-election survey data, post-election survey data, and voter registration and election data to interpret the outcomes of the 2016 presidential and U.S. Senate races in Pennsylvania. This analysis shows how changes in voter registration and voter turnout in specific areas of the Commonwealth, driven in large part by less-educated voters, those dissatisfied with the current direction of the country, and the performance of the incumbent president, explain the 2016 election results.
All Politics Is Organizational: An Analysis of Candidate Recruitment and Political Influence in Pennsylvania School Board Elections
Get PDFThis article seeks to enhance the limited research dedicated to local school board elections by investigating whether Pennsylvania school board members are recruited candidates or are self-starters. The article also investigates which kinds of organizations are the most active sources of candidate recruitment and engagement in Pennsylvania school board races and which organizations are the most and least influential in local school board politics. Using a unique dataset obtained through the statewide Pennsylvania School Board Survey and interviews with current state legislators who began their political careers as local school board members, this article finds that local political party organizations play a larger than expected role in influencing local school board elections and recruiting candidates. Board members themselves are also found to be highly engaged in political party activity within their communities before ever seeking office. Also explored are the implications of these findings for school board politics and the discipline’s view of local party organizations.
More Trouble Ahead for Public School Finance: The Implications of Generational Change in Pennsylvania
Get PDFPennsylvania’s generational transitions will be rockier and more expensive for education finance than is publicly acknowledged. Debates over both the necessity for and the affordability of tax increases already frame state education budget debates. Education policy and planning data, especially at regional and local levels, tend to be isolated from other sector wide and cross-sectoral data. This study explores the examples of tax capacity and workforce quality data and concludes that two issues state, regional, and local education policymakers can’t ignore are increased dependency ratios and a smaller workforce with fewer economic opportunities. Aging seniors increase dependency ratios, are less mobile, and enjoy lighter tax burdens, putting greater public responsibilities on the labor force. Younger, educated workers have heavier tax burdens and are more likely to leave for younger states with less heavy tax burdens
The Pennsylvania 2015 State Supreme Court Election in Comparative Perspective
Get PDFJudicial candidates and outside groups spent a record 4 million to influence the outcome of the high court race. This article places the 2015 Pennsylvania Supreme Court election in comparative perspective to assess whether or not the campaign fundraising, campaign spending, and campaign advertising in this race was as “historic” as commonly claimed. Interestingly, when compared with other Pennsylvania high court races, the 2015 race was not a watershed election for candidate fundraising, especially when fundraising totals are averaged per candidate. Neither was the tone and tenor of campaign advertising in the 2015 Pennsylvania race outside the trend of contemporary judicial campaigns in other states, which have seen a marked increase in televised attack advertising by outside groups that often target candidates as soft on crime. Overall, the cost and tone of the 2015 Pennsylvania Supreme Court race appears to be a part of wider trends in contemporary judicial elections and very much in line with the cost of high court races in Pennsylvania over the last decade. The article concludes by surveying empirical evidence on the efficacy of judicial elections and assesses Pennsylvania’s prospects for reforming its method of judicial selection
Mexico’s Living Dead
No full textIn September 2014, I was as a judge for the Hearing on Feminicide and Gender Violences organized by the Permanent People’s Tribunal in Chihuahua, Mexico. Although the levels of social violence and insecurity have touched the lives of everyone, the impact has been most devastating for women. For three days we heard testimonies from victims of feminicide, disappearances and trafficking, structural violence, forced exile, domestic violence, sexual violence, and persecution as human-rights defenders. We heard repeated references to the police’s and military’s long history of violating human rights with impunity, to the complicity of the state authorities with organized crime, to cartel infiltration at all levels of government, to a <i>narco-maquina</i> (narco-machine) currently ruling Mexico. It became exceedingly difficult to determine whether it was agents of the state or organized crime groups that were perpetrating these crimes against humanity.
Black Quotidian: A Digital Humanities Approach to Teaching African American History
No full textBlack Quotidian: Everyday History in African-American Newspapers [blackquotidian.com] is a digital humanities project designed to highlight moments from ordinary lives in African American history. Each day I post at least one Black newspaper article from that date in history, accompanied by a brief commentary. Taking the ordinary aspects of African American history seriously means recognizing the richness and diversity of Black lives, cultures, and communities. I continue to be surprised by the amazing stories that live in the archives of Black newspapers. Black Quotidian brings several hundred of these stories to web audiences, and, in the process, the project is changing how I think about, write about, and teach African American history
Yellow Peril in Arkansas: War, Christianity, and the Regional Racialization of Vietnamese Refugees
No full textAt the intersection of Asian American studies and southern history, this article examines the racialization of Vietnamese refugees in Arkansas in 1975, when the federal government selected Fort Chaffee as a processing center for people fleeing Southeast Asia. It constructs a framework that asks how Northwest Arkansas’s history shaped government agencies’ and Arkansans’ reactions to the refugees. The responses of the state and the people to the presence of the Vietnamese reflected national factors such as the controversial nature of the Vietnam War, fear of competition in the labor market, and long-standing national anti-Asian sentiments. These concerns intersected with dynamics such as Christian beliefs including the rise of the Moral Majority and its racial overtones, states’ rights, and racial mores grounded in local history. The article draws on never-before-used sources that allow us to hear the voices of Vietnamese refugees as they awaited sponsors in Fort Chaffee. Though focused on the experience of Vietnamese refugees in 1975, it provides an entry point to analyze how regional history affects processes of racialization for other groups such as Latinas/os.
Dedon Kamathi: Making the Airwaves Safe for Revolution at High Noon
No full textI first met Brother Dedon in 1990. I had just joined the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (AAPRP). Dedon seemed preoccupied and aloof, but also gregarious, with an easy smile and a ready laugh. Those of us who were new members looked upon veterans like Dedon with awe. We had no idea of the amount of hard work the cadre had put into becoming community and political organizers. They were the realization of Ahmed Seku Ture’s analysis “History teaches us that [revolutionary consciousness] is created and developed through ideological education and revolutionary practice. We can equally affirm that without ideological training and without revolutionary action there can be no revolutionary consciousness.” Brother Dedon lived out this maxim
