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Introduction: Studying Presidents and the Presidency
Lori Cox Han
"This chapter provides an overview of presidential studies and the current state of presidency research. Having a better understanding of topics such as the different eras usually associated with the presidency and the methods of study used by presidency scholars can aid students in learning about the various facets of the institution of the presidency as well as those who have held the office. This chapter considers the general categories used to organize presidents and their presidencies by historical eras, which provides a sense of how the institution itself, along with the day-to-day job responsibilities of the president, has evolved throughout U.S. history. Next, the state of presidency research is considered, including how the various 8 methodological tools now available to presidency scholars have greatly expanded our understanding of presidents as political actors and the presidency as a political institution. Finally, the plan of the book explains how the essays in this volume illustrate the new and emerging trends within presidential studies and how that research provides both a guide and a basis for analysis of the presidency for students. If the 2020 presidential election, the presidential transition, and the early months of the Biden administration show us nothing else, it is that the presidency continues to challenge the conventional wisdom of presidency scholars while forging new areas of research and exploration."
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Campus Free Speech: A Reference Handbook
Lori Cox Han and Jerry Price
Comprehensive and accessible, this one-stop resource examines the history, development, and present state of free speech issues on college campuses, including a range of political perspectives and viewpoints. It explains such concepts and forces as academic freedom, intellectual benefits of open debate, using speech as a weapon of hate and harassment, and the history of campus social protest. It also presents a broad survey of the arguments and rhetoric-as well as actual record-of America's two major parties on campus free speech and academic freedom issues. Other focuses of coverage include major laws and commonly employed college and university policies governing free speech and civil liberties for students, faculty, and other employees on campuses and classrooms across the country.
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Homeland Insecurity: Terrorism, Mass Shootings and the Public
Ann Gordon and Kai Hamilton Gentry
In this book, Ann Gordon and Kai Hamilton Gentry expertly illuminate how the public has a role to play in ensuring its own security.
Recent terror attacks and mass shootings in the United States have added urgency to the need for research on terrorism, the public’s understanding of the precursors of terrorism and public preparedness for mass shootings and acts of terror. Unfortunately, most Americans do not understand what constitutes suspicious behavior or how to report it. Even more alarmingly, the public does not know what to do in the event of terrorist attack or mass casualty incident. Drawing on five years of the Chapman Survey of American Fears (CSAF), a nationally representative survey, and real-world events, Homeland InSecurity offers actionable solutions on how to educate the public to overcome fear and play an active role securing schools, public venues and the homeland itself. The book addresses proposals by survivors and victims’ families to reduce violence through campaigns to deny shooters the notoriety they seek and reduce access to guns. It also explores the rise of activism among survivors of school shootings and their quest to educate the public and end school shootings.
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Homeland Insecurity: Terrorism, Mass Shootings and the Public
Ann Gordon and Kai Hamilton Gentry
In this book, Ann Gordon and Kai Hamilton Gentry expertly illuminate how the public has a role to play in ensuring its own security.
Recent terror attacks and mass shootings in the United States have added urgency to the need for research on terrorism, the public’s understanding of the precursors of terrorism and public preparedness for mass shootings and acts of terror. Unfortunately, most Americans do not understand what constitutes suspicious behavior or how to report it. Even more alarmingly, the public does not know what to do in the event of terrorist attack or mass casualty incident. Drawing on five years of the Chapman Survey of American Fears (CSAF), a nationally representative survey, and real-world events, Homeland InSecurity offers actionable solutions on how to educate the public to overcome fear and play an active role securing schools, public venues and the homeland itself. The book addresses proposals by survivors and victims’ families to reduce violence through campaigns to deny shooters the notoriety they seek and reduce access to guns. It also explores the rise of activism among survivors of school shootings and their quest to educate the public and end school shootings.
Homeland InSecurity will be essential for scholars, students, and policy makers.
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Muslims’ Religious Freedom and Religiosity: Measurement and Impact
Hannah M. Ridge
Multiple measures of religious freedom and states’ regulation of religion are at work in sociology of religion. These scales apply one score to a country or to a subset of its policies. A uniform state score conceals the internal religious diversity and the heterogeneous experiences of religious freedom that can result. These, in turn, encourage ecological fallacies and mask the disparate impact that religious freedom for one’s own community and for other groups can have on individuals’ preferences and decisions. To demonstrate the value of measuring and studying religious freedom at the individual level, this study applies individual-level assessments of freedom and religiosity from Sunni-Muslim-majority countries to the religious market theory literature. It shows that restricting individuals’ religious freedom suppresses religious belief and behavior. Restrictions placed on other groups, however, can have independent positive and negative effects on religiosity. The study also raises concerns about the ability of current measures of religious freedom to measure individuals’ freedom, at least in Muslim-majority countries.
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Privacy and Outing
Gordon Babst
Some elected officials have been both closeted and homophobic, supporting anti-gay policies and laws at every opportunity, even trumpeting their anti-gay voting record to constituents. While their choice to be closeted may be protected by privacy, an aspect of broader liberty, may they at the same time be outed without violating their right to privacy? Some members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community have chosen to express their autonomy in a different way: by being out, yet being out in a homophobic society with its anti-gay policies and laws has entailed risks that impinge on this autonomy and on the freedom to participate as an equal citizen in a society that was foreclosed as much possible by the closeted homophobic elected public official who helps to maintain a system that accords him money, privilege, and power at a cost he is apparently willing to bear. This is an asymmetrical relationship in which the choice of the gay but homophobic lawmaker to be closeted is protected but incompatible with the autonomy of others, namely, of gay individuals and the LGBT community as a whole who are negatively by the laws and policies the former advocates for. This asymmetry, based on a fraudulent pretense, contributes to the injustice at work and affects the political process for gay-citizen participants that outing rightly seeks to rectify.
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Civil Liberties and the Dual Legacy of the Founding
John W. Compton
"This chapter will argue that the framers’ dual legacy in the area of civil liberties has cast a long historical shadow. Since the early republic, Americans have invoked constitutional civil liberties provisions to challenge customary forms of authority. Yet establishing the abstract legitimacy of one's claim – that it comports with a particular conception of religious liberty or the freedom of speech, for example – has typically been insufficient to prevail in the courts."
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Introduction to Hatred of America's Presidents: Personal Attacks on the White House from Washington to Trump
Lori Cox Han
"To provide a better understanding of the current state of affairs as related to hatred of presidents, this edited volume provides historical and political context to explain how we got to this point."
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Equal Citizenship and Religious Liberty: An Irresolvable Tension?
Gordon Babst and John Compton
In this paper our focus is not on discrimination against religion, but for it. We are concerned that U.S. citizens who are religious believers receive degrees of latitude and deference in the law relative to non-religious believers that privilege religion in general in American society to the detriment of the equal citizenship and standing of other citizens. In many cases, the citizens most impacted by religious deference are precisely those who have been identified in law and policy partly through the lens of majority religious belief, as not deserving of equal consideration. This not ought to be an effect of constitutionally securing religious freedom. We distinguish religion-based deference in law and policy with respect to race and sexual orientation to illustrate the conundrums we find, conundrums that are highlighted in the Supreme Court's recent Hobby Lobby decision.
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Benjamin Barber
Gordon Babst
This is a section focusing on the American poltical theorist, Benjamin Barber.
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Brian Barry
Gordon Babst
This is a section on philosophy and political science professor Brian Barry.
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A Presidency Upstaged: The Public Leadership of George Bush, Joseph V. Hughes Jr. and Holly O. Hughes
Lori Cox Han
A president who distances himself from stagecraft will find himself upstaged. George H. W. Bush sought to “stay the course” in terms of policy while distancing himself from the public relations strategies employed during the administration of Ronald Reagan, his predecessor. But Bush discovered during his one-term presidency that a strategy of policy continuity coupled with mediocre communication skills “does not make for a strong public image as an effective and active leader in the White House", as author and scholar Lori Cox Han demonstrates in A Presidency Upstaged.
Incorporating extensive archival research from the George Bush Presidential Library at Texas A&M University—including documents only recently available through requests made under the Freedom of Information Act—Han thoroughly examines the public presidency of George H. W. Bush. Han analyzes how communication strategies, relationships with the press, and public opinion polling shaped and defined his image as a leader. The research for this study also includes content analysis of press coverage (both print and television) and major public addresses during the Bush administration.
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Off to the (Horse) Races: Media Coverage of the "Not-So-Invisible" Invisible Primary of 2007
Lori Cox Han
"While it may seem obvious to even the casual observer of U.S. politics how important news media coverage is for a presidential candidate in the heat of the primary or general election battle, it is the media attention garnered during the pre-nomination phase of the campaign that can play a crucial role in deciding if the candidate even makes it to the first nominating contest. Often referred to as the "invisible primary;' the pre-primary period for the 2008 election occurred earlier and lasted longer than in any previous campaign in modern American history...This chapter will consider two aspects of news media attention during the 2007 invisible primary. First, the role of the news media as the "great mentioner" was considered by analyzing how often candidates' names were mentioned in news coverage...Second, a more specific analysis will be provided of the four candidates presenting a potential first to U.S. presidential politics-Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama, Bill Richardson, and Mitt Romney-and the news coverage each received during the invisible primary."
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Boy Scouts v. Dale
Gordon Babst
This section deals with the discrimination against Boy Scouts of America soutmaster James Dale.
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Bradwell v. Illinois
Gordon Babst
This section focuses on the right of a married woman to be a practing lawyer.
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Consuming Its Own? Heteronormativity Contra Human Plurality
Gordon Babst
This chapter focuses on heterosexuality and heteronormativity.
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Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian, & Bisexual Group of Boston
Gordon Babst
This section focuses on the rights of Irish LGBT groups in Boston.
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Introduction to Moral Argument, Religion, and Same-sex Marriage: Advancing the Public Good
Gordon Babst
This introduction explains the ongoing arguments about gay marriage and religion.
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Lawrence v. Texas
Gordon Babst
This section focuses on the discrimination of homosexuality in Texas.
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Zorach v. Clausen
Gordon Babst
This section focuses on the case for deaf private school students to have a sign-language interpreter in the classroom.
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Public Leadership in the Political Arena
Lori Cox Han
"In this chapter, I address the concept of leadership and the Important role that it now in the process at all levels and in various branches of I offer a definition of leadership and the various political that encompass this of governing. The vast scholarly literature that has developed in recent decades on the topic of presidential communications offers an excellent assessment of the contemporary importance of public leadership. I a brief overview of public strategies and how they have evolved over time (particularly in concurrence with technological advances in mass as well as relevant examples' that help us to understand the of public leadership. Finally, I conclude with an assessment of how public leadership specifically has shaped the overall definition of political and how that contributes to the dynamic of the current political environment within American government."
Below you may find selected research books and book chapters from Political Science faculty in the Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences.
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