MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

Edited by JOSEPH and BARRIE KLAITS

Animals and Man in Historical Perspective edited by Joseph and Barrie Klaits provides a comprehensive exploration of the complex relationship between humans and animals throughout history. This collection of essays delves into various historical periods, offering insightful perspectives on how animals have influenced and been influenced by human societies. From ancient civilizations to modern times, the book examines the ways in which animals have been perceived, treated, and utilized by humans in different cultural contexts. The editors, renowned scholars in their field, have curated a thought-provoking anthology that sheds light on the intricate interplay between animals and mankind, making it essential reading for anyone interested in understanding our shared history.

Harper & Row, 1974, 169 pages

By John Feffer

In a post-Trump world, the right is still very much in power. Significantly more than half the world’s population currently lives under some form of right-wing populist or authoritarian rule. Today’s autocrats are, at first glance, a diverse band of brothers. But religious, economic, social and environmental differences aside, there is one thing that unites them - their hatred of the liberal, globalised world. This unity is their strength, and through control of government, civil society and the digital world they are working together across borders to stamp out the left. In comparison, the liberal left commands only a few disconnected islands - Iceland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Korea, Spain and Uruguay. So far they have been on the defensive, campaigning on local issues in their own countries. This narrow focus underestimates the resilience and global connectivity of the right. In this book, John Feffer speaks to world’s leading activists to show how international leftist campaigns must come together if they are to combat the rising tide of the right. A global Green New Deal, progressive trans-European movements, grassroots campaigning on international issues with new and improved language and storytelling are all needed if we are to pull the planet back from the edge of catastrophe. This book is both a warning and an inspiration to activists terrified by the strengthening wall of far-right power.

London: Pluto Press, 2021.

By Malik Almaliki

Cyberhate against a person or a group based on their apparent identity, such as ethnicity, religion or nationality, on social media platforms is quickly growing and spreading. This has negative effects on both the online-generated content quality and the users of these platforms. Fortunately, the interest of computer science researchers in finding ways to stop cyberhate spread on social media platforms has been increasing recently. However, and to the best knowledge of the author, no studies have yet provided an overview and categorization of the various forms of conducted research on this subject, despite the increased interest in the subject. The author attempts to address this gap by performing a systematic mapping of the literature to generate an inclusive view of the subject in the last ten years (2012-2022). As a result, 274 primary studies were identified that fulfilled the devised criteria for including and excluding articles related to the context of this study. Following that, a grouping of these primary studies into categories based on their research type, contribution type, and research focus was conducted. The findings showed that the majority of the studies focused on offering cyberhate detection solutions. The findings also show that evaluation and validation of cyberhate detection solution, employing digital intervention approaches for reducing cyberhate dissemination by users, and the prevention and management of cyberhate propagation are all areas where research is lacking. The goal of this study is to assist practitioners and domain researchers in identifying current research gaps and promising areas for future research. 

New York City, IEEE Access. 2023, 8pg

By Gabriel Ahmanideen

In the aftermath of the war on terror, mosques have become targets for hate groups, leveraging online platforms to amplify global anti-mosque campaigns. These groups link local protestors with international hate networks, fuelling both online and offline (i.e., onsite) anti-mosque campaigns. Thoroughly reviewing the literature addressing the interaction between online and offline Islamophobia and introducing an anti-mosque social media page instilling the public with online and offline anti-mosque hate, this article suggests a strong interaction between online and offline Islamophobia. In the provided case study from the Stop Mosque Bendigo (SMB), purposeful sampling was used to collect postings before and after the Christchurch Mosque attacks to analyse the evolution of online anti-mosque campaigns in tandem with real-life hate cases. The literature and the case study reveal the interaction between local and global, digital, and physical realms, as well as the convergence of everyday racism with extremist far-right ideologies like the Great Replacement theory. Relying on the present literature and indicative findings, the article advocates for systematic investigations to uncover the direct connection between online hate and physical attacks and urges closer monitoring and accountability for those online platforms and social media pages apparently contributing to onsite hate-driven actions.

Australia, Sociology Compass. 2023, 14pg

By Vidisha Bajaj

Amidst high-profile incidents of hate violence against religious and caste minorities, the Indian Supreme Court laid down a series of guidelines to address mob violence and lynching in its July 2018 Tehseen Poonawalla order. The order mandated a police supervisory structure and stronger official accountability, more stringent penal provisions, victim and witness protection, and more expansive compensation and rehabilitation schemes. It also recommended the enactment of anti-lynching legislation. This article contributes to the conversation about the order’s implementation by drawing from the empirical work conducted by Jindal Global Law School’s (JGLS) legal clinic on hate crimes. It focuses on how the police deploy their official discretion in investigating and prosecuting incidents of mob violence and lynching. First, based on detailed interviews of police officials, the article shows how the ambiguity of the category of lynching continues to plague the implementation of the order. Second, taking a case study of a potential hate crime investigation, it shows how the police structures investigations and charges to undermine the goals of criminal law. This article shows that police officials use their discretion to construct lynching — during various stages of investigation and charging — to obscure and invisibilise the crime. This quotidian exercise of discretion is shaped by broader systemic problems in India’s criminal justice system, especially its lack of independence, inadequate training, and institutional bias. The article advocates that these systemic concerns must be integrated in a meaningful response to mob lynching and hate crimes in India.

India, Jindal Global Law Review. 2020, 34pg

By Wojciech Kaczkowski

Suicide, including firearm suicide, remains a substantial public health concern in the United States. During the previous 2 decades, overall suicide rates and firearm suicide rates have risen by approximately one third, approaching 50,000 overall suicides during 2022, including approximately 27,000 firearm suicides (1). Firearm suicides account for approximately one half of all suicides, and this proportion has been increasing (2,3). This analysis includes national firearm suicide data from 2019 through the end of 2022, categorized by race and ethnicity, presented both annually and by month (or quarterly) to track subannual changes.

United States, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. 2019-2022, 2pg

By Bennett Clifford

Abstract:

After a five-year period between 2014 and 2019 in which the frequency and lethality of domestic terrorism incidents in the United States substantially increased, federal counterterrorism authorities now view domestic violent extremism (DVE) as the foremost terrorist threat facing the country. In March 2021, the Office for the Director of National Intelligence released an assessment that the “most lethal domestic violent extremist threat[s]” to the United States were racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists (RMVE).1 This assessment mirrored similar findings by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Department of Justice (DOJ), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) during the past half-decade, all of which point to RMVE as the principal domestic terrorism threat to the United States. Responding to RMVE-inspired terrorists will require a close, data-driven assessment of the nature and scope of the threat. To this end, this report evaluates 40 cases of individuals charged in United States federal courts between 2014 and 2019, who are alleged to have planned or conducted violent attacks in the United States in furtherance of RMVE causes or ideologies. By evaluating the demographic, ideological, and organizational backgrounds of the perpetrators, as well as their attack-planning methods and processes, this report evaluates the successes and failures of federal law enforcement in investigating and prosecuting RMVE attack planners. The report finds:

• RMVE attack planners in the U.S. had a wide range of demographic backgrounds, but tended to be older than other categories of violent extremist attack planners, and were predominantly male.

• Attack planners’ ideologies were situated across the RMVE spectrum, from affiliates of well-established white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups to members of relatively newer organizations. However, the most lethal RMVE attack planners were organizationally unaffiliated, and despite drawing from a variety of RMVE ideologies, did not have membership in any RMVE organization or group.

• RMVE attack planners tended to target religious institutions, particularly Jewish, Black, and Muslim places of worship. The most common attack-planning method involved the use of firearms; RMVEs also experimented with a range of other methods from bombings to arson and vehicular assault.

• Due in part to the lack of a federal domestic terrorism statute, the FBI and DOJ utilized a range of charges to investigate and prosecute RMVEs. This study finds that the patchwork of offenses used to investigate RMVE sometimes led to failures in interdicting attack planners

Based on these findings, the study recommends a data-driven reevaluation and reallocation of FBI and DOJ resources and staff dedicated to investigating and prosecuting RMVE. It also proposes broader information-sharing between federal, state, and local partners on RMVE threats, particularly between the FBI and local religious communities. Finally, the report argues that a federal statute that criminalizes acts of domestic terrorism, similar to 18 U.S. Code § 2332b, would be most applicable to prosecutions of attack planning cases involving RMVEs.

Washington, DC: Program on Extremism, George Washington University; and National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center, 2021. 37p.

by Brittney Bringuez Kathryn Hampton Ranit Mishori Cynthia Pompa Barbara Robles Ramamurthy Vidya Ramanathan

When the news broke in 2018 that the U.S. government was forcibly separating thousands of parents and children as young as infants at the U.S.-Mexico border, nationwide outcry ensued due to the evident trauma caused by the separations. Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) found that the cases of forcible family separation by the U.S. government that we documented constituted torture. PHR’s torture finding was cited by the Biden campaign during the 2020 U.S. presidential election. However, as the election passed, uproar and outrage around family separation abated, but parents and children who were eventually reunited struggle to recover from severe psychological effects of the trauma they endured. Parents who were deported and separated from their children for three or even four years continued to suffer and wait in desperation for the moment when they could be with their children again. 

This study documents the longer-term psychological impact of this inhumane policy of forced separation on parents who were deported by the United States government, most of them separated from their children for three to four years. The persistent and damaging psychological effects documented by PHR call out for acknowledgement, accountability, redress, and rehabilitation. This study also seeks to make visible the desires of the parents who were interviewed regarding means of redress owed to them by the U.S. government. In the context of a broad discussion about redress, it is essential that the views of affected communities be directly incorporated into research and policy recommendations.

New York: Physicians for Human Rights, 2022. 46p.

By: Dik van Arkel

Antisemitism is an exceptional historical phenomenon. Its history goes back at least 2000 years and has manifested itself in many countries and in a wide range of societies. However, it is not a universal phenomenon. Many countries have no tradition of anti-Semitism and even in those where anti-Semitism periodically raises its head, there have been long periods where it appears to have lain dormant. But it has never altogether disappeared, and all the large-scale social changes of the past two millennia have given it extra impetus. This definitive study tackles the complex roots and manifestations of anti-Semitism over the centuries, tracing the rise of anti-Jewish stereotypes and the circumstances in which racial prejudice may have tragic consequences. This book will quickly become a classic text for students and researchers in this persistent and worldwide prejudice.

Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009. 592p.

By Jillian Peterson, James Densley, Stasia Higgins

This mixed-methods study examines social media use among public mass shooters in the United States as an extension of a comprehensive database of 170 mass shooters from 1966 to 2021. Here, we report findings from a systematic content analysis of public data and detailed timelines that were constructed for 44 mass shooters’ social media habits and changes to those habits during the period of time leading up to their shooting. The paper also presents as a case study, a sentiment analysis, and term-linkage network for one perpetrator’s total 3,000 tweets. Several themes were found in the data—there were shooters who changed their posting habits and in some cases, stopped using social media entirely in the lead up to their crime; shooters who used hate speech and were “radicalized” to violence online; shooters with a demonstrable interest in violence, who referenced past mass shooters in their own communications; shooters who exhibited signs of mental illness and suicidality; shooters who were already known to authorities; and shooters who like those described above, actively posted while shooting, presumably to boost their own celebrity status. The findings from this study provide insight into commonalities among mass shooters in terms of their social media usage, which could lead to new pathways for prevention and intervention.

United States, Social Media + Society. 2023

By Ashley D. Cannon,  Kate Reese,  Paige Tetens  &  Kathryn R. Fingar 

Between 2015 and 2021, 3,498 Americans died from unintentional gun injuries, including 713 children 17 years and younger. Roughly 30 million American children live in homes with firearms, many of which are loaded and unlocked. This study assesses the scope of unintentional shootings by children 17 and younger in the US and the relationship between these shootings and state-level secure storage laws.

United States, Injury Epidemiology. 2022, 13pg

By David M Hureau

Guns are central to the comprehension of the racial inequalities in neighborhood violence. This may sound simple when presented so plainly. However, its significance derives from the limited consideration that the neighborhood research paradigm has given guns: they are typically conceived of as a background condition of disadvantaged neighborhoods where violence is concentrated. Instead, I argue that guns belong at the forefront of neighborhood analyses of violence. Employing the logic and language of the ecological approach, I maintain that guns must be considered as mechanisms of neighborhood violence, with the unequal distribution of guns serving as a critical link between neighborhood structural conditions and rates of violence. Furthermore, I make the case that American gun policy should be understood as a set of macrostructural forces that represent a historic and persistent source of disadvantage in poor Black neighborhoods.

United States, American Academy of Arts & Sciences. 2022 18pg

By David M. Hureau

The ecological approach to the study of crime and violence represents one of the most distinctive, enduring, and empirically supported paradigms of criminological research. At its heart, this approach promotes understanding of the unequal distribution of violence across neighborhoods as a function not of essentialist qualities of the people that occupy particular places, but rather of spatially patterned inequalities that influence community capacity to control violence. Drawing inspiration from the theoretic development of Sampson and Wilson’s classic article, “Toward a Theory of Race, Crime, and Urban Inequality'' (1995), over the last two decades, researchers working in the ecological tradition have wrestled with two key problems in the study of neighborhood violence. First, what  are the links that connect the structural features of neighborhoods—like poverty and racial composition—to violence? These links have come to be referred to as the mechanisms of neighborhood violence. And second, how do factors originating outside of the confines of neighborhoods—such as large economic shifts and discriminatory housing policies—concentrate within specific neighborhoods in ways that influence disadvantage and violence? These factors have typically been called macrostructural forces.   In this paper, I argue that guns are central to the comprehension of the racial inequalities in neighborhood violence. Such an argument may sound simple when presented so plainly. However, its significance derives from the limited consideration that the neighborhood research paradigm has given guns, typically conceiving of them as a background condition of disadvantaged neighborhoods where violence is concentrated. Instead, I argue that guns belong at the forefront of neighborhood analyses of violence. Employing the logic and language of the ecological approach, I maintain that guns must be considered as mechanisms of neighborhood violence, with the unequal distribution of guns serving as a critical link between neighborhood structural conditions and rates of violence.  Furthermore, I make the case that American gun policy should be understood as a set of  macrostructural forces that represent an historic and persistent source of disadvantage in poor black neighborhoods.

United States, SquareOneJustice,  Roundtable on the Future of Justice Policy. 2019 16pg

By Runnymede Trust

Racism has always been a matter of life and death. This was never more true than for Stephen Lawrence, a bright young man who dreamed of becoming an architect. Stephen was murdered by racist strangers as he made his way home with a friend in South East London, 30 years ago. It was not only his killers who targeted Stephen with racism. The behaviour of the police - from those first on the scene, to those who handled the disastrous investigation into his murder and dealt closely with his family - was characterised at every stage by racist treatment and bias in the system. Significant questions were raised on accountability in the criminal justice system and whether Black and minority ethnic communities and families were treated fairly. The fight for justice that followed, led by Stephen’s grieving parents, has brought us all to know Stephen’s name, and carry forward his legacy. The seminal 1999 Macpherson Report, published in direct response to the manner in which the police handled Stephen’s case, recognised unequivocally that the Metropolitan Police Force was ‘institutionally racist,’ an unprecedented finding at the time. Many events in the wake of Stephen’s murder, including race equality legislation, still inform and influence racial justice work today.

London, Runnymede Trust. 2023, 80pg

United States. Department Of Defense

From the document: "The National Defense Industrial Strategy (NDIS) - the first of its type to be produced by the Department of Defense - provides a path that builds on recent progress while remedying remaining gaps and potential shortfalls. This NDIS recognizes that America's economic security and national security are mutually reinforcing and, ultimately, the nation's military strength depends in part on our overall economic strength. This comprehensive NDIS aims to answer the question: How do we prioritize and optimize defense needs in a competitive landscape undergirded by geopolitical, economic, and technological tensions?"

Washington DC. United States. Department Of Defense . 2023. 80p.

By Otto Pipatti

While highly respected among evolutionary scholars, the sociologist, anthropologist and philosopher Edward Westermarck is now largely forgotten in the social sciences. This book is the first full study of his moral and social theory, focusing on the key elements of his theory of moral emotions as presented in The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas and summarised in Ethical Relativity. Examining Westermarck’s evolutionary approach to the human mind, the author introduces important new themes to scholarship on Westermarck, including the pivotal role of emotions in human reciprocity, the evolutionary origins of human society, social solidarity, the emergence and maintenance of moral norms and moral responsibility. With attention to Westermarck’s debt to David Hume and Adam Smith, whose views on human nature, moral sentiments and sympathy Westermarck combined with Darwinian evolutionary thinking, Morality Made Visible highlights the importance of the theory of sympathy that lies at the heart of Westermarck’s work, which proves to be crucial to his understanding of morality and human social life. A rigorous examination of Westermarck’s moral and social theory in its intellectual context, this volume connects Westermarck’s work on morality to classical sociology, to the history of evolutionism in the social and behavioural sciences, and to the sociological study of morality and emotions, showing him to be the forerunner of modern evolutionary psychology and anthropology. In revealing the lasting value of his work in understanding and explaining a wide range of moral phenomena, it will appeal to scholars of sociology, anthropology and psychology with interests in social theory, morality and intellectual history.

Abingdon, UK. Routledge, 2020. 150pg

By Eric S. Fish 

 The two most frequently charged federal crimes are immigration crimes: the misdemeanor of entering the United States without inspection, and the felony of reentering the United States after deportation. Federal prosecutors charge tens of thousands of people with these two crimes each year. In 2019, these two crimes comprised a majority of all federal criminal cases. About 99 percent of the defendants in these cases are nationals of Mexico or other Latin American countries. 

These two crimes were enacted into law through the Undesirable Aliens Act of 1929. The legislative history of that Act reveals that its authors were motivated by pseudoscientific racism. They sought to preserve the purity of the white race by preventing Latin American immigrants from settling permanently in the United States. And they spoke forthrightly about this motive. They described Latin American immigrants as “mongrelized,” “peons,” “degraded,” and “mixed blood.” They held hearings where experts in eugenics testified about Latin Americans’ undesirable racial characteristics. They gave speeches about the need to protect American blood from contamination. They described Latin American immigration as a “great race question” concerning invasion by “people essentially different from us in character, in social position, and otherwise.” 

This Article thoroughly documents the legislative history of the Undesirable Aliens Act of 1929. It relies on primary sources—speeches, legislative reports, testimony, statements in the congressional record, private correspondences, eugenicist scholarship, and other writings by the men who conceived and enacted the law. The Article shows that this history brings the law into conflict with the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. While the crimes of unlawful entry and reentry are racially neutral on their faces, the story of their enactment reveals explicit racial animus against Latin American immigrants. Consequently, they are unconstitutional under the framework established by the Supreme Court in Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development Corp. 

USA, Iowa Law Review. 2023, 56pg

By INGRID EAGLY

Eric Fish’s Article, Race, History, and Immigration Crimes, explores the racist motivation behind the original 1929 enactment of the two most common federal immigration crimes, entry without permission and reentry after deportation. This Response engages with Fish’s archival work unearthing this unsettling history and examines how his research has informed a series of legal challenges seeking to strike down the modern federal border crossing law as violating the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. Focusing on the district court decision in United States v. Carrillo-Lopez that struck down the reentry law, and the subsequent Ninth Circuit reversal, this Response explores three central and recurring questions in the immigration law field: (1) the legacy of plenary power; (2) the significance of the blurry boundary between immigration law and other areas of law, such as the criminal law; and (3) the thorny problem of when taint from a discriminatory predecessor law continues to infect a modern law. The resolution these three key debates is central not only to the constitutionality of the illegal entry and reentry laws, but also to other areas of law that shape the lives of immigrants in the United States.

USA, UCLA School of Law. 2023, 20pg

By Megan Ming Francis and LeahWright-Rigueur

This review examines the Black Lives Matter movement. Despite a growing body of literature focused on explaining the formation and activities of the present Black Lives Matter movement, less attention is given to the historical antecedents. What are earlier Black-led movements centered on ending state-sanctioned violence? This article situates Black Lives Matter in a much longer lens and examines the long struggle to protect Black lives from state sanctioned violence.We draw from existing research to provide a historical genealogy of the movement that traces the beginnings of a movement to protect Black lives to the work of Ida B.Wells and follows it up to the work of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and the urban rebellions that have followed.

USA, Annual Review of Law and Social Science. 2021, 21 pg

By KUIKEN, TODD

From the document: "Artificial intelligence (AI) is a term generally thought of as computerized systems that work and react in ways commonly thought to require intelligence. AI technologies, methodologies, and applications can be used throughout the biological sciences and biology R&D, including in engineering biology (e.g., the application of engineering principles and the use of systematic design tools to reprogram cellular systems for a specific functional output). This has enabled research and development (R&D) advances across multiple application areas and industries. For example, AI can be used to analyze genomic data (e.g., DNA sequences) to determine the genetic basis of a particular trait and potentially uncover genetic markers linked with those traits. It has also been used in combination with biological design tools to aid in characterizing proteins (e.g., 3-D structure) and for designing new chemical structures that can enable specific medical applications, including for drug discovery. AI can also be used across the scientific R&D process, including the design of laboratory experiments, protocols to run certain laboratory equipment, and other 'de-skilling' aspects of scientific research. The convergence of AI and other technologies associated with biology can lower technical and knowledge barriers and increase the number of actors with certain capabilities. These capabilities have potential for beneficial uses while at the same time raising certain biosafety and biosecurity concerns. For example, some have argued that using AI for biological design can be repurposed or misused to potentially produce biological and chemical compounds of concern."

Library Of Congress. Congressional Research Service. 2023.