Justice, Ethical Leadership & Truth (LART-260): Course Readings

Sheeran talks about why, in a world with enough food for everyone, people still go hungry, still die of starvation, still use food as a weapon of war. Her vision: "Food is one issue that cannot be solved person by person. We have to stand together."

The Restaurant Opportunities Centers (ROC) United is a nonprofit organization fighting to improve wages and working conditions for the nation’s restaurant workforce.

ONE FAIR WAGE is advancing policy, driving industry change, and shifting the narrative in order to ensure that all workers in America are paid at least the full minimum wage from their employers.

Presents a biography of American labor organizer Cesar Chavez. Background; Career as a migrant worker in California; Advocacy for Mexican-American laborers; Association with the Community Service Organization (CSO); Creation of the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA); Details of strikes organized against California grape growers; Rivalry of Chavez's United Farm Workers of America (UFW) with the Teamsters Union; Boycotts and hunger strikes organized by Chavez; Awards and honors.

Presents a biography of Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Background; Support for her husband's political career; Involvement with Red Cross relief efforts during World War I; Political activity during her husband's recovery from an attack of polio; Highlights of her writings; Efforts to promote civil rights and include women in the political process; Increased role in the presidency, due to her husband's handicap; Role as chairperson of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.

Focuses on the contribution of Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of former United States President Franklin Roosevelt in the United Nations (UN). Nomination as a delegate to the General Assembly; Election as chair person of the Human Rights Commission; Adoption of universal declaration of human rights by General Assembly. INSET: Preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Why you should listen
When Josette Sheeran was the executive director of the United Nations World Food Programme, based in Rome, she oversaw the largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger around the globe. Every year, the program feeds more than 90 million people, including victims of war and natural disasters, families affected by HIV/AIDS, and schoolchildren in poor communities.

Assisting almost 100 million people in around 83 countries each year, the World Food Programme (WFP) is the leading humanitarian organization saving lives and changing lives, delivering food assistance in emergencies and working with communities to improve nutrition and build resilience.

Milton Friedman (born July 31, 1912, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.—died November 16, 2006, San Francisco, California) American economist and educator, one of the leading proponents of monetarism in the second half of the 20th century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1976

Gates, Bill (William Henry Gates 3d), 1955–, American business executive, b. Seattle, Wash. At the age of 19, Gates founded (1975) the Microsoft Corp., a computer software firm, with Paul Allen. They began by purchasing the rights to convert an existing software package. In 1980 they agreed to produce the operating system for the personal computer being developed by International Business Machines (IBM). That system, MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System), and subsequent programs (including the Windows operating systems) made Microsoft the world's largest producer of software for microcomputers.

Presents biographical information on 19th century American author Henry David Thoreau. Details of his childhood in Concord, Massachusetts; Impact of tuberculosis on his life; Relationship with author Ralph Waldo Emerson; Highlights of his career as an educator.

Thoreau's Civil Disobedience espouses the need to prioritize one's conscience over the dictates of laws. It criticizes American social institutions and policies, most prominently slavery and the Mexican-American War.

In his essay, Thoreau observes that only a very few people – heroes, martyrs, patriots, reformers in the best sense – serve their society with their consciences, and so necessarily resist society for the most part, and are commonly treated by it as enemies. Thoreau, for his part, spent time in jail for his protest. Many after him have proudly identified their protests as acts of civil disobedience and have been treated by their societies – sometimes temporarily, sometimes indefinitely – as its enemies.

Presents a biography on civil rights activist Rosa Parks. Background on how Parks, an African American seamstress, became an icon of the American civil rights movement in the mid-1950s with her refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man in segregated Montgomery, Alabama; Details on her arrest for disorderly conduct; Response of a bus boycott by the African American community in Montgomery; Support of the boycott by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; How Parks' case was taken to the United States Supreme Court; Reasons that the case became a landmark in the struggle for African American civil rights, because it accepted that all segregation was illegal; Background on Parks' early life and marriage.

Rosa Louise Parks was nationally recognized as the “mother of the modern day civil rights movement” in America. Her refusal to surrender her seat to a white male passenger on a Montgomery, Alabama bus, December 1, 1955, triggered a wave of protest December 5, 1955 that reverberated throughout the United States. Her quiet courageous act changed America, its view of black people and redirected the course of history.

Presents a biography of African-American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. Background and education; Organization of the 1956 bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama; Belief in the effectiveness of nonviolent protest; Arrest after protesting the segregation of public bathrooms in Birmingham, Alabama; Impact on the creation of the Civil Rights Act; Participation in the 1963 march on Washington, and delivery of the 'I Have a Dream' speech; Assassination in 1968.

The author discusses civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.'s involvement in the protests against segregation in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963, and the publication of his essay "Letter From Birmingham Jail" and the responding essay "Call for Unity" by Alabama Christian leaders.

Presents a biography on socialist philosopher Karl Marx, and focuses on his early life and education. Details on his childhood in Prussia; Irony that Marx was born to a Jewish family who converted to Protestantism, and that later Marx declared himself an atheist; Education and participation in the intellectual group the "Young Hegelians"; Dedication of Marx to philosophy; Details on his marriage, career, and philosophies.

Karl Marx (born May 5, 1818, Trier, Rhine province, Prussia [Germany]—died March 14, 1883, London, England) revolutionary, sociologist, historian, and economist. He published (with Friedrich Engels) Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei (1848), commonly known as The Communist Manifesto, the most celebrated pamphlet in the history of the socialist movement. He also was the author of the movement's most important book, Das Kapital. These writings and others by Marx and Engels form the basis of the body of thought and belief known as Marxism.

Friedrich Engels (born Nov. 28, 1820, Barmen, Rhine province, Prussia [Germany]—died Aug. 5, 1895, London, Eng.) German socialist philosopher, the closest collaborator of Karl Marx in the foundation of modern communism. They coauthored The Communist Manifesto (1848), and Engels edited the second and third volumes of Das Kapital after Marx's death.

Adam Smith (baptized June 5, 1723, Kirkcaldy, Fife, Scot.—died July 17, 1790, Edinburgh) Scottish social philosopher and political economist. After two centuries, Adam Smith remains a towering figure in the history of economic thought. Known primarily for a single work—An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), the first comprehensive system of political economy—Smith is more properly regarded as a social philosopher whose economic writings constitute only the capstone to an overarching view of political and social evolution. If his masterwork is viewed in relation to his earlier lectures on moral philosophy and government, as well as to allusions in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) to a work he hoped to write on “the general principles of law and government, and of the different revolutions they have undergone in the different ages and periods of society,” then The Wealth of Nations may be seen not merely as a treatise on economics but also as a partial exposition of a much larger scheme of historical evolution.

In a series of profiles of Human Rights Defenders and how they came to be, we talk about Tarana Burke, the woman who changed the conversation on sexual violence forever.

Presents a biography of Indian social reformer Mohandas Gandhi, also known as 'Mahatma.' Background; Education in England; Legal career; Compulsion to aid the oppressed Indian community in South Africa; Adoption of the spiritual principles of satyagraha and ahimsa; Details of his campaign of nonviolent civil disobedience designed to end British rule in India; Gandhi's hunger strikes to promote the cause of civil rights in India; His role in India's eventual independence in 1947.

Satyagraha
Literally, "soul-force." It was the term given to Gandhi's strategy of nonviolent resistance to oppression

Presents a biography on renowned author and scientist Rachel Carson. Details on her early life and family; Education at Pennsylvania College for Women; Details on her education at Johns Hopkins University; Work at the United States Bureau of Fisheries in Washington, D.C. as a junior aquatic biologist; How she became editor-in-chief for all the publications produced by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

A marine biologist and nature writer, Rachel Carson catalyzed the global environmental movement with her 1962 book Silent Spring. Outlining the dangers of chemical pesticides, the book sparked the movement that ultimately led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Rachel Carson was one of the world’s foremost leaders in conservation. Her work as an educator, scientist and writer revolutionized America’s interest in environmental issues. Whether it was her passion for the oceans and coasts, her inspiration as one of the first female scientists and government leaders, or her overall footprint on the history of conservation, her legacy is one to be honored and celebrated.

The article discusses the historical significance of the Port Huron Statement released by the U.S. group Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in 1962. It examines the SDS and the attempt to establish a political movement known as the New Left in the U.S. It discusses the role of U.S. political activist Tom Hayden in drafting the Port Huron Statement. The article analyzes the worldview of the Port Huron Statement and briefly compares and contrasts it to other political manifestoes.

Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), American student organization that flourished in the mid-to-late 1960s and was known for its activism against the Vietnam War.

The article discusses the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 2018 proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10, 1948, which calls for universal protection of human rights by international and domestic governments and intergovernmental organizations. The document was created by the United Nations' Commission on Human Rights with representatives including Rene Cassin of France, and Eleanor Roosevelt of the U.S. and Charles Malik of Lebanon.

Viktor Frankl, in full Viktor Emil Frankl, (born March 26, 1905, Vienna, Austria—died September 2, 1997, Vienna), Austrian psychiatrist and psychotherapist who developed the psychological approach known as logotherapy, widely recognized as the “third school” of Viennese psychotherapy, after the “first school” of Sigmund Freud and the “second school” of Alfred Adler. The basis of Frankl’s theory was that the primary motivation of an individual is the search for meaning in life and that the primary purpose of psychotherapy should be to help the individual find that meaning.