Assignment.  SAKAI quiz One&Two will be available on January 31 and must be taken before class on February 4.  You may take it as many times as you like and the highest score will count. SAKAI will tell you which items you get wrong. (Quizzes later in the semester will not generally follow this pattern).  This is to get you started.  This quiz will have mostly items from Chapter Two of Turncoats and True Believers.  It is, of course, open book, so you should have the chapter available either on paper or in another window of your computer.  There are also a few items from the videos and other materials discussed in class.

This week's assignments will explore the origins of the beliefs that motivate social movements.  The most central ideas are in Chapter Two of Turncoats and True Believers. 

Assigned Reading:  If not otherwise specified, readings are available in SAKAI, click on Social Movements, then on Resources, then on Weeks One and Two.   You can also buy a copy of the book Turncoats and True Believers online if you prefer.  Some readings are on the open internet and can be accessed by clicking on the link. Turncoats and True Believers, Chapter One.   This chapter is a personal memoir and a remembrance of a friend of mine, Al Szymanski (photo).  In reading this, think about your own personal history.  What strong beliefs do you have?  Where did they come from?  Do they come from your parents?  Your generation in history? Turncoats and True Believers, Chapter Two.  This gives a basic theoretical framework for understanding the psychology of ideological beliefs.  Do any of the "ideological scripts" fit you?  If not, what script do you follow in responding to controversial issues.  You will be asked to write something about this next week. DelawareDiversityProgram.html.  Scholars Attack Campus Radicals.  (from the New York Times, may require free subscription)

Video:  Anticommunistmurderer.mp4  in SAKAI

Notes and Links from Lectures:

NJPIRG will visit our class on Monday.  The PIRGS are an outgrowth of the consumerist movement started by Ralph Nader.  An essay of mine on Ralph Nader. 

AFSCME Alternative Union Break. 

"In the 1930s and 1940s, many members of the Nazi Party in Germany were extremely well educated...[but] no matter how well they had cultivated their intellect, they were still trapped in a web of totalitarian propaganda that mobilized them for evil purposes....  Abstract thought, when organized into clever, self-contained, logical formulations, can sometimes have its own quasi-hypnotic effect and so completely capture the human mind as to shut out the leavening influences of everyday experience.  Time and again, passionate believers in tightly organized philosophies and ideologies have closed their minds to the cries of human suffering that they inflice on others who have not yet pledged their allegiance and surrendered their minds to the same ideology."   Al Gore, The Assault on Reason, 220-221??

Ted Goertzel's FBI file. 

 Hugo Chavez on George W. Bush. 

David Brooks, How Voters Think.  Political Brain review by Brooks.  Daily Kos review.   NJ Primary at Center of Storm.  Each primary candidate has a WEB site which you can find easily through a search engine. 

We will see some incidents from Campus Culture Wars, "a video that examines five controversial incidents at universities around the country involving conflicts of values: University of Pennsylvania: racially insensitive language; Harvard University: gay rights; Stanford University: multicultural ideals; Pennsylvania State: sexual harrassment and University of Washington: radical feminism. Using dramatic recreations, firsthand testimony and opinions from such experts as Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, the film offers an enlightening sampling of the issues that are changing the face of American culture today."  The Dolfman case that we will discuss first is mentioned in Scholars Attack Campus Radicals.  A similar issue is raised in the DelawareDiversityProgram.html reading (in SAKAI).