Dorothy Irene Height (March 24, 1912 – April 20, 2010) was an African American administrator, educator, and social activist. She was the president of the National Council of Negro Women for forty years, and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994, and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2004.

Early life

Height was born in Richmond, Virginia. At an early age, she moved with her family to Rankin, Pennsylvania, a steel town in the suburbs of Pittsburgh. Height was admitted to Barnard College in 1929, but upon arrival, she was denied entrance because the school had an unwritten policy of admitting only two black students per year. She pursued studies instead at New York University, earning a degree in 1932, and a master’s degree in educational psychology the following year.

Career

Height started working as a caseworker with the New York City Welfare Department and, at the age of twenty-five, she began a career as a civil rights activist when she joined the National Council of Negro Women. She fought for equal rights for both African Americans and women, and in 1944 she joined the national staff of the YWCA. She also served as National President of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority from 1946 to 1957. She remained active with Delta Sigma Theta Sorority thoughtout her life. While there she developed leadership training programs and interracial and ecumenical education programs.

Dorothy Height

In 1957, Height was named president of the National Council of Negro Women, a position she held until 1997. During the height of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, Height organized “Wednesdays in Mississippi“,^[5] which brought together black and white women from the North and South to create a dialogue of understanding.

American leaders regularly took her counsel, including First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and Height also encouraged President Dwight D. Eisenhower to desegregate schools and President Lyndon B. Johnson to appoint African American women to positions in government. In the mid 1960s, Height wrote a column entitled “A Woman’s Word” for the weekly African-American newspaper, the New York Amsterdam News and her first column appeared in the March 20, 1965 issue on page 8.

Height served on a number of committees, including as a consultant on African affairs to the Secretary of State, the President’s Committee on the Employment of the Handicapped, and the President’s Committee on the Status of Women. In 1974, Height was named to the National Council for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, which published The Belmont Report, a response to the infamous “Tuskegee Syphillis Study” and an international ethical touchstone for researchers to this day.

Later life

In 2004, Height was recognized by Barnard for her achievements as an honorary alumna during its commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision.

The musical stage play If This Hat Could Talk, based on her memoirs Open Wide The Freedom Gates, debuted in the middle of 2005. It showcases her unique perspective on the civil rights movement and details many of the behind-the-scenes figures and mentors who shaped her life, including Mary McLeod Bethune and Eleanor Roosevelt.

Height was the chairperson of the Executive Committee of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the largest civil rights organization in the USA. She was an honored guest and seated on stage at the inauguration of President Barack Obama on January 20, 2009.

She attended the National Black Family Reunion, celebrated on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., every year until her death in 2010.^{[citation needed]}

On March 25, 2010 Height was admitted to Howard University Hospital in Washington D.C. for unspecified reasons. Her spokeswoman issued a statement stating that at that time she was in a “very serious, but stable” condition but that they were remaining optimistic about her recovery. On April 20, 2010, Height died at the age of ninety-eight. Her funeral service at the Washington National Cathedral on April 29, 2010 was attended by President and Mrs Obama plus many dignitaries and notable people.^[6] She was later interred at Fort Lincoln Cemetery.

Awards and honors

• Presidential Citizens Medal (1989)
• Spingarn Medal from the NAACP (1993)
• Franklin Delano Roosevelt Freedom From Want Award (1993)
• inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame (1993)
• Presidential Medal of Freedom (1994)^[1]
• 7th Annual Heinz Award Chairman’s Medal (2001)^[7]
• Listed on Molefi Kete Asante’s list of 100 Greatest African Americans (2002) ^[8]
• Congressional Gold Medal by President George W. Bush on behalf of the United States Congress (Approved, 2003) (Awarded, 2004)^[1]
• Flag Half-Staff Day for Death of Dorothy Height, observed on April 29th, 2010. Ordered by President Barack Obama on April 26th, 2010, to mourn her death.

References

Links

• National Council for Science and the Environment
• Dorothy Height – Daily Telegraph obituary
• African Events Congressional Gold Medal Award for Dorothy Height
• Dorothy Height’s oral history video excerpts, The National Visionary Leadership Project
• Dorothy Height’s Videos
• Legacy: Black and White in America, a documentary featuring Dorothy Height
• Flag Half-Staff Day Order by President Barack Obama

• Height, Dorothy. Open Wide the Freedom Gates: A Memoir.
• Tracey A. Fitzgerald, The National Council of Negro Women and the Feminist Movement, 1935–1975, Georgetown University Press, 1985.
• Judith Weisenfeld, “Dorothy Height”, Black Women in America: Profiles, MacMillan Library Reference USA, New York, 1999, pp. 128–130.
• [Legacy: Black and White in America], a documentary featuring Dorothy Height.

Thanks to Wikipedia®

January 19, 2010 9:05 | by Jacques Attali

As often, a natural event can be used as a metaphor for a social phenomenon.
And, to describe and understand crises, nothing is better than the metaphor
of an earthquake.

First, an economic crisis, like any earthquake, is the result of an
accumulation of imbalances, consequence of long movements, followed by a
sudden break. In the case of geology, the long trend is the continental
drift; in the case of the economy, it is the fall of the centers of power,
from one ocean to another. Both of these trends bring about accumulations of imbalances (in one case, geological; in the other, financial) being
translated by breaks (in one case, earthquakes; in the other, crises).

In both cases, there is very often before the disaster, a lack of concern
for the risks involved and a refusal to take seriously the alarmist
predictions, there is also extreme inequality in the treatment of victims,
there are countless replicas, shaking or relapses, extending the initial
chaos, there is still a chaotic management of relief and support, and
finally a quasi immediate loss of memory, once the situation returns back to
normal, of the underlying reasons of the disaster.

The metaphor goes even further, because earthquakes have an economic impact.

Not only because they destroy everything they are called to reconstruct, and
provide opportunities for public expenditure, so necessary, according to
Keynes, for the resumption of growth; but above all because living in an
earthquake zone is a constant call to newness, change, inventivity. This
leads to the emergence of a culture of vigilance, of the precarious, of
being light, nomadic, of the short-lived; to an acceptance of modernity,
the condition for progress.

No wonder that among the most creative lands of humanity, we find at the
forefront some of the most seismically active lands: Greece, Italy,
Flanders, California, Japan, all have, each in turn, experienced the threat
of earthquakes as an incentive to change, as an appeal to what the Greeks
called "the tyranny of the new." And Haiti has done better than anyone else
in the world, demonstrating the only creativity that it could afford,
cultural creativity, one that puts everything into perspective, in a
constant search for surpassing oneself and the beautiful.

It would be wise to learn this lesson from the current tragedy: the wealth
of humanity comes from its capacity to imagine the coming changes and to
live them the best way possible; and for this to admit that can only survive
those who are capable of giving meaning to the destruction of the past; and
to understand that wealth always comes from "creative destruction" of which
Joseph Schumpeter, the greatest 20th century economist spoke, far more
discerning than John Maynard Keynes.

At least, may this terrible tragedy serve this purpose. And may Haiti be
rebuilt (who would dare talk about "rebuilding" when it comes to such
slums?). So Haitians can finally make their art not a refuge in their misery
but a way to live with dignity their brilliant contribution to History.

j@attali.com

© L’Express

Note: Conversation avec Jacques Attali

http://blogs.lexpress.fr/attali/

Jacques Attali (born 1 November 1943 in Algiers, Algeria) is a French economist and scholar. From 1981 to 1991, he was an advisor to President François Mitterrand.

Foreign Policy’s First Annual List of the 100 Top Global Thinkers | Foreign Policy: http://bit.ly/8aLXLi

#86 Jacques Attali French Economist

“Justice is one of the most popular courses in Harvard’s history”

“Sandel has opened up an important area of debate at a time when some of the unquestioned assumptions underlying economic policy and praxis of the last few decades have been exposed as fraudulent and are being questioned. What happens to the human person in a greedy society? What happens when people and values become commodities that can be traded? What happens when morality is reduced to what is technically practicable? And who is willing to take responsibility instead of just blaming others for what they don’t like?” Nick Baines

Michael J. Sandel (born March 5, 1953) is a political philosopher and a professor at Harvard University. He is best known for his critique of Rawls‘ Theory of Justice (1971) in his Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (1982).

Education

Sandel graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Brandeis University in 1975, and received his doctorate from Balliol College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, where he studied under Charles Taylor.

Philosophical views

Sandel subscribes to the theory of communitarianism (although he is uncomfortable with the label), and in this vein he is perhaps best known for his critique of John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice. Rawls’ argument depends on the assumption of the veil of ignorance, which allows us to become “unencumbered selves.”

Sandel’s view is that we are by nature encumbered to an extent that makes it impossible even in the hypothetical to have such a veil. Some examples of such ties are the ties we make with our families, which we do not make by conscious choice but are born with them already attached. Because they are not consciously applied, these ties are impossible to separate from someone. Sandel believes that only a less-restrictive, looser version of the veil of ignorance can be possible. Rawls’s argument, however, depends on the fact that the veil is restrictive enough that we make decisions without knowing who will be affected by these decisions, which of course is impossible if we are already attached to people in the world.

Teaching

Justice

Sandel has taught the famous “Justice”^[1] course at Harvard for two decades. More than 10,000 students have taken the course, making it one of the most highly attended in Harvard’s history. The fall 2007 class was the largest ever at Harvard, with a total of 1,115 students.^[2] The fall 2007 course was recorded, and is offered online for students nationwide through the Harvard Extension School. An abridged form of this recording is now a 12-episode TV series, Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?, in a coproduction of WGBH and Harvard University. Episodes are available on the Justice with Michael Sandel website.^[3] There is also an accompanying book Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?, and the sourcebook of readings Justice: A Reader.

Click here for Other episodes -videos- of Justice by Michael Sandel

Other teaching

Sandel also co-teaches with Douglas Melton “Ethics and Biotechnology”, a seminar considering the ethical implications of a variety of biotechnological procedures and possibilities.

Authorship

Sandel is the author of multiple publications including Democracy’s Discontent and Public Philosophy. His Public Philosophy is a collection of his own previously published essays, examining the role of morality and justice in American political life. He offers commentary on the roles of moral values and civic community in the American electoral process – a much-debated aspect of the 2004 U.S. election cycle and current political discussion.

Michael Sandel gave the 2009 Reith Lectures on “A New Citizenship” on BBC Radio, addressing the ‘prospect for a new politics of the common good’ ^[4]. The lectures were delivered in London on May 18, Oxford on May 21, Newcastle on May 26 and Washington DC in early June ^[5].

Public service

Sandel served on the George W. Bush administration’s President’s Council on Bioethics.

2009 immigration commentary

In 2009, he described a controversial ’solution’ to immigration. Sandel suggested that the international community should impose annual refugee quotas on nations according to their wealth. Countries would be allowed to pay other, poorer countries to take refugees allotted under their quota.^[6]

Sandel does not endorse this view. He merely uses it as an illustration of the markets inevitably presupposing and promoting certain norms. He concludes: “There is something distasteful about a market in refugees, even if it’s for their own good, but what exactly is objectionable about it? It has something to do with the fact that a market in refugees changes our view of who refugees are and how they should be treated. It encourages the participants — the buyers, the sellers and also those whose asylum is being haggled over — to think of refugees as burdens to be unloaded or as revenue sources rather than as human beings in peril.”^[7]

Works

• Michael J. Sandel, Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, (September 15, 2009), ISBN 978-0374180652
• Michael J. Sandel, Justice: A Reader, Oxford University Press, (September 27, 2007), ISBN 978-0195335125
• Michael J. Sandel, The Case against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, (January 31, 2007); paperback (September 30, 2009), ISBN 978-0674036383
• Michael J. Sandel, Public Philosophy: Essays on Morality in Politics, Harvard University Press (October 31, 2006), ISBN 978-0674023659
• Michael J. Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, Cambridge University Press, (March 28, 1998), ISBN 978-0521567411
• Michael J. Sandel, Democracy’s Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (February 6, 1998), ISBN 978-0674197459

Other languages

• Michael J. Sandel, Plädoyer gegen die Perfektion (German), Berlin University Press, (January 1, 2008), ISBN 978-3940432148
• Michael J. Sandel and Maria Luz Melon, El Liberalismo y los Limites de la Justicia (Filosofia del Derecho) (Spanish), Gedisa Editorial, (November 2000), ISBN 978-8474327069

See also

• American philosophy
• List of American philosophers

References

External links

• Harvard University Bio
• Podcast interview with Nigel Warburton on Philosophy Bites on What Shouldn’t Be Sold
• Podcast interview with Nigel Warburton on Ethics Bites on the topic of Genetic Enhancement in Sports
• The President’s Council on Bioethics
• FORA.tv The Case Against Perfection
• FORA.tv Michael Sandel on Justice: A Journey in Moral Reasoning at the Aspen Institute, one hour excerpt
• A page of links relating to the 2009 Reith Lectures
• Justice with Michael Sandel, WGBH Boston and Harvard University, complete online video with discussion guides, readings and discussion circle
• Justice: What’s The Right Thing To Do? on Harvard University’s YouTube channel

© Matthieu Ricard (born 1946) is a Buddhist monk who resides at Shechen Tennyi Dargyeling Monastery in Nepal.

Recently the Dalai Lama Center Canada organized a Peace Summit in Vancouver with the Dalai Lama and other Nobel Prize winners and speakers. One evening the rock singer and humanitarian Bob Geldof, whose Live Aid concerts have raised 100s of millions of dollars for Africa, made this passionate plea:

“For most of us, all we can do when witnessing suffering is to put our hand in our pocket. If a million of us do that, it is a lot of people, a lot of help, and governments should take note. We need to keep children alive long enough so that they can become the doctors and engineers of tomorrow. Without that something will wither and die inside of us.

Many of these children don’t have parents because of man-made mistakes like wars. In my life I have met extraordinary people such as Mother Theresa. She would tell me that she saw the suffering of Christ on the broken backs of the poor. I don’t see that. I don’t see God. I see the malignant hand of man laid bare. And if that is so, it can be remedied, because it we have done it and we can undo it. We can say: “Enough!” All this is the symptom of poverty revealed in lack of education and in ill health.

In terms of global wealth, the need is infinitesimal if the political will would be there. How many times do we have to manifest the will of the people to the politician and say: “GET-THIS-DONE!” How many times do we have to create African children’s choirs and pop concerts in order to convince human beings to join in the glory of humanity? What are we – a circus or a society?

In truth, the real need represents only a tiny proportion of national budgets.

In the case of America, it is 0.16% of the national economy. It is not that Americans are selfish. Surveys show that when asked what percentage of their GDP do they believe goes into foreign aid, Americans say: “10%”. And when asked “it that enough”, they say “no”. But when they actually find out that it is only 0.16%, they are dismayed.”

The Commission for Africa has requested a doubling of aid by 2010 that will total 50 billion US dollars. Three months ago, one private bank in Britain was given 75 billion pounds within 30 minutes to save it from going under.

Yet a billion people will go down, and the cost is less that one private British company, in an economic system representing more than 50 trillion per annum. And one of the world’s richest economies can’t find a fraction of that.

We really are a joke.

When we break our promise to the poor, we break the most sacred promise, because breaking this promise kills people.

About Matthew Ricard

Original date of publication (French) June 3d 2009 7:21 | by
JACQUES ATTALI

Contrary to what they want us to
believe, the crisis deepens: in the United
States, all deficits are rising; banks defaulting are worsening, and even if
Wall Street is up, its value is still 40% lower than that of October 2007.
In addition,everyone whispers within informed circles, that we should expect
many more tsunamis: on private real estate loans, on credit cards, and on
commercial real estate.

It’s not a new recovery plan that we need, but a true awareness of the
cultural and political urgencies. And in particular a radical questioning of
the division of powers between those who create and those who finance, the
condition, once again, of our survival.

————————————————————————————————————
Translation from French made possible with permission of Mr. Jacques Attali

http://blogs.lexpress.fr/attali/

————————————————————————————————————

Mr. Jacques Attali Jacques Attali (born 1 November 1943 in Algiers, Algeria)
is a French economist and scholar. From 1981 to 1991, he was an advisor to
President François Mitterrand, In April 1991 he became the first President
of the London-based European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the
financial institution established by western governments to assist the
countries of eastern and central Europe and the former Soviet Union in their
transition to democratic market economies. He worked at the bank until 1993.
In 1998 Attali founded the French non-profit organization PlaNet Finance
which focuses on microfinance. Attali is perhaps best known in America as
the author of Noise: The Political Economy of Music. More Info:

http://blogs.lexpress.fr/attali/

—————————————————————————————

Passer aux choses sérieuses

3 juin 2009 7h21 | par JACQUES ATTALI

j@attali.com
 

A RETRO-GOVERNMENT

IN NEED OF IRAN

PROMISES OF THE SUBURBS

OPTIMISMS

THREE YEARS

En version originale par Jacques Attali:

OPTIMISMES

TROIS ANS

Les 8 Secrets de la Réussite

pour sous titrage en Français, prière de
cliquer sur”view subtitles” et
faire le choix France (French) .

The problem is not new from: Ross Perot’s in 1992 presidential election… Mr. “r-e-a-d m-y l-i-p-s” and raising taxes…

Bill Cliton in 1993...(where they first lost the Congress in 30 years…)

David Walker, Comptroller General of the United States (2007) thinks USA have four deficits:

1) Debt/Budget
2) Balance payment,
3) saving,
4) Leadership

Americans have a vague sense of their government’s long-term fiscal prospects… Young people worry more about the war in Iraq, terrorism, jobs than the bad shape of the economy.

By 2030 Medicare will be about $5 trillion in the hole. Isn’t this an unfair burden on future generations? David Walker has planned a fiscal wake-up tour for 2008?

Here is a short video on this topic from David Walker, Comptroller General of the United States:

N.B: Lucidity...bring together…the recent “An Inconvenient Truth” by Al Gore with “USA growing fiscal imbalance” by David Walker, Comptroller General of the United States What is at stake? …

It’s not just the future of the USA…

“whenever America sneezes…rest of the world…flue”

I let you make your own conclusions.

Mark Joyner wrote: Mark Joyner Logs

March 13, 2007 Dear Bill O’Reilly

(About The 600,000 in Iraq Bill Maher Mentioned)

I sent this letter to Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly (The O’Reilly Factor)

the other day after watching him “debate” Bill Maher. He likes “pithy,” so that’s what I gave him: Bill, you said that the 600,000+ death toll figure in Iraq is from a “far left website.”

This characterization is flatly incorrect. It was a study conducted by American and Iraqi epidemiologists. It was overseen by Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health*.

Does “far left” mean “presents evidence that contradicts my beliefs?” That seems to be how you use the phrase. I hope you have the courage to correct this disinformation, sir. Respectfully … Mark Joyner

————————————————————————————————————–

A comment from Sunny Sudden FRANCE

-Earth Citizens sin- “indifference”

Thank you Mark for opening the issue on “disinformation.” Everyone seems very passionate: “O”Reilly, Maher, politics, facts, truth”…

In the meantime “Earth Citizens” (God’s creatures if you believe there is a “Higher Power”) are still dying daily in Irak. (lost Iraqi, American lives… many being innocent people= Earth Citizens)…

Is the debate about “disinformation”?…

We live in a global “fear” based society. We are becoming increasingly “indifferent”… to “others” suffering.

Gandhi said: “in the midst of death, life persists, and in the midst of darkness, light perists…We can say “no” to violence, and “yes” to life.”

If we really felt the weight of our own individual actions,and responsability… Instead of spending so much time “arguing with words”…

We would strengthen our life daily by our personal “acts”…

Noone can be “neutral” and “indifferent” to what’s happening to Planet Earth, its Earth Citizens (specialy in Irak)… certainly NOT because we’ve got 3 meals a day, a job, a fat bank account, or because we have too much responsability or are too poor to “care”…

In a fear based society, Earth Citizens are being daily bombarded by GIGABITS of “disinformation” and crippled with “information overload”…

In this context what should Mark Joyner have said?

“For God’s sake, don’t disturb me…leave me alone…with your “true lies…Let’s keep it simple…Let me mind only Simpleology Training”…

My friend as you have a “fight with words”: “disinformation”, “white lie”, “true lie”… let me remind you that Earth Citizens are dying DAILY in Irak…

So I ask you Earth Citizen:

“Are you blind”… and “is your heart made of stone”?…

that you do not SEE what’s at stake (LIVES: HUMAN LIVES)…

We have right here and right now a crisis of: Truth, Honesty, Courage, and LUCIDITY…

This is not just about “disinformation”…and O’Reilly…

It’s foremost about “indifference”…and “fear”…

The higher we are socialy the more we seek security... no disturbance…”leave me alone”… “I have enough of my own problems”

And slowly “inertia” takes place in our lives… (physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual inertia) while EVERYTHING is constantly changing in this dynamic universe…

As we are “debating” Earth Citizens in Irak give their last breath on Planet Earth…

Albert Schweitzer*, “le  Grand Docteur” who fought for growth of brotherhood among races was right when he said:

“Men do not think”…

In fact the last thing “WE”… YOU and I…want to face is that YOU and I are responsible for this violence…

- FIAT LUX -

*Albert Schweitzer: His whole life and all of his work are a message addressed to all men regardless of nationality or race…

Note: “In these troubled and uncertain times men are searching for something which will allow them to believe that mankind will one day enjoy the reign of peace and goodwill. “If altruism, reverence for life, and the idea of brotherhood can become living realities in the hearts of men, we will have laid the very foundations of a lasting peace between individuals, nations, and races.”

Presentation Speech by Gunnar Jah for: -Dr. Albert Schweitzer NOBEL PEACE PRIZE RECIPIENT 1952-

Joel Bomane

NOTE FROM Mark Joyner: Beautiful! Read my “constructs” and you’ll see we’re very much on the same page. It’s one thing to think it, another to do something about it. Look at “Construct One” for the first step …