Watching America

Humor & Entertainment

Stanley Rothman

Linda S. Lichter

S. Robert Linda S. Lichter and Stanley Rothman With Assistance of Dan Lichter

Television

Simon&Schuster

Is the American judiciary still the least dangerous branch, as Alexander Hamilton and legal scholar Alexander Bickel characterized it? Unlike legislatures or administrative agencies, courts do not make policy so much as direct and redirect policy as it is implemented. The judicial contribution to policymaking involves the infusion of constitutional rights into the realm of public policy, and as the government has grown, the courts have become more powerful from doing more and more of this. Powers and Rothman explore the impact of the federal courts, providing a brief account of the development of constitutional law and an overview of the judiciary's impact in six controversial areas of public policy.•Busing •Affirmative action •Prison reform •Mental health reform •Procedural reforms in law enforcement •Electoral redistricting In each of these areas, the authors review significant cases that bear on the particular policy, exploring the social science evidence to assess the impact of the courts on policies―and the consequences of that intervention. Powers and Rothman conclude that judicial intervention in public policy has often brought about undesirable consequences, sometimes even for the intended beneficiaries of government intervention.

The Least Dangerous Branch?: Consequences of Judicial Activism

Stephen P. Powers

Praeger

Questions about the nature of intelligence and intelligence testing have sparked increasing controversy during the past two decades. The widely held view that intelligence is measureable, and both genetic endowment and environment are key determinants of intelligence, first came under sharp attack during the decade of the 1960s. It was asserted that we do not know what intelligence is, that we do not know how to measure intelligence, and that IQ tests are biased against both minorities and the poor. To determine current opinions among the relevant scientific communities on these issues, the authors used survey research to sample a broad group of experts in educational and developmental psychology as well as those whose specific expertise is intelligence testing. They found that, despite the common understanding to the contrary, most experts continue to believe that intelligence can be measured and that genetic endowment plays an important role in IQ. The central question addressed in this book is why expert opinion and public views toward intelligence and its measurement are so widely divergent. The authors conclude that the public’s view of the IQ controversy has been shaped by inaccurate media coverage; and, more importantly, by changes in the nature of American liberalism as well as the key role of civil rights issues in American life. The increasing influence of new strategic elites in the United States, and the changing role of the mass media, have profoundly affected the character of scientific information communicated to the general public and how it is communicated.

The I. Q. Controversy: The Media and Public Policy

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Mark Snyderman

Psychology & Counseling

Transaction Publishers

The Still Divided Academy is a wonderful examination of the academic community that shows their inner workings by addressing a broad range of issues including: academic politics, tenure, perceived and real political imbalance, academic freedom, and diversity. Administrators, professors, and students have very different priorities, values, and expectations and therefore, often have conflicting opinions on these issues. Drawing on data collected in a specially commissioned public opinion survey as well as other recent research on higher education, Rothman, Kelly-Woessner, and Woessner, create an incredibly readable presentation of both the similarities and differences between those running our universities and those attending them. The authors manage to remain impressively neutral; instead they give us a fuller perspective of the people on our college campuses.

The Still Divided Academy: How Competing Visions of Power, Politics, and Diversity Complicate the Mission of Higher Education

Education & Teaching

April Kelly-Woessner

Matthew Woessner

Higher & Continuing Education

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

When Roots of Radicalism first appeared. Nathan Glazer noted "this is a major work on the relationship between radical politics and psychological development." He went on to predict "no one will be able to write about the left and radicalism without taking it into account." Now finally available in a paperback edition, with a new introduction, the reader can evaluate just how prescient the authors are in their review of the student radical movement. Replete with interviews of radical activists, their provocative book paints a disturbing picture. The book raises critical questions about much previous social science research and ultimately about the reason an entire generation of Americans was so infatuated with the radical mystique. Robert A. Nisbet called the book "an extraordinarily skilled fusion of historical and psychological approaches to one of the most explosive decades in American social history." Robert E. Lane added "it will be prudent to read Rothman and Lichter along with our well worn copies of Keniston and Fromm." Writing in Political Psychology, Dan E. Thomas argued "the [book] is arguably the most important and definitely the most provocative book in the field of personality and politics to have appeared in the past several years." Recently, in Forbes. Peter Brimelow referred to Roots of Radicalism as "Rothman's main achievement as a political scientist...his definitive study of the 1960s New Left." In the new introduction, the authors review the initial reception of Roots of Radicalism and its subsequent treatment. They also review the major literature on the causes, course, and consequences of the student movement of the 1960s which has appeared since the publication of the book. Finally, they update their own analysis.

Roots of Radicalism: Jews, Christians, and the Left

Politics & Social Sciences

S. Robert Lichter

Social Sciences

Routledge

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Books by Stanley Rothman