front cover of The Harm in Hate Speech
The Harm in Hate Speech
Jeremy Waldron
Harvard University Press, 2012

Every liberal democracy has laws or codes against hate speech—except the United States. For constitutionalists, regulation of hate speech violates the First Amendment and damages a free society. Against this absolutist view, Jeremy Waldron argues powerfully that hate speech should be regulated as part of our commitment to human dignity and to inclusion and respect for members of vulnerable minorities.

Causing offense—by depicting a religious leader as a terrorist in a newspaper cartoon, for example—is not the same as launching a libelous attack on a group’s dignity, according to Waldron, and it lies outside the reach of law. But defamation of a minority group, through hate speech, undermines a public good that can and should be protected: the basic assurance of inclusion in society for all members. A social environment polluted by anti-gay leaflets, Nazi banners, and burning crosses sends an implicit message to the targets of such hatred: your security is uncertain and you can expect to face humiliation and discrimination when you leave your home.

Free-speech advocates boast of despising what racists say but defending to the death their right to say it. Waldron finds this emphasis on intellectual resilience misguided and points instead to the threat hate speech poses to the lives, dignity, and reputations of minority members. Finding support for his view among philosophers of the Enlightenment, Waldron asks us to move beyond knee-jerk American exceptionalism in our debates over the serious consequences of hateful speech.

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front cover of Health Care Issues in the United States and Japan
Health Care Issues in the United States and Japan
Edited by David A. Wise and Naohiro Yashiro
University of Chicago Press, 2006

Recent data show wide disparity between Japan and the United States in the effectiveness of their health care systems. Japan spends close to the lowest percentage of its gross domestic product on health care among OECD countries, the United States spends the highest, yet life expectancies in Japan are among the world’s longest. Clearly, a great deal can be learned from a comprehensive comparative analysis of health care issues in these two countries.

In Health Care Issues in the United States and Japan, contributors explore the structural characteristics of the health care systems in both nations, the economic incentives underlying the systems, and how they operate in practice. Japan’s system, they show, is characterized by generous insurance schemes, a lack of gatekeepers, and fee-for-service mechanisms. The United States’ structure, on the other hand, is distinguished by for-profit hospitals, privatized health insurance, and managed care. But despite its relative success, an aging population and a general shift from infectious diseases to more chronic maladies are forcing the Japanese to consider a model more closely resembling that of the United States.

In an age when rising health care costs and aging populations are motivating reforms throughout the world, this timely study will prove invaluable.

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front cover of High-Stakes Schooling
High-Stakes Schooling
What We Can Learn from Japan's Experiences with Testing, Accountability, and Education Reform
Christopher Bjork
University of Chicago Press, 2015
If there is one thing that describes the trajectory of American education, it is this: more high-stakes testing. In the United States, the debates surrounding this trajectory can be so fierce that it feels like we are in uncharted waters. As Christopher Bjork reminds us in this study, however, we are not the first to make testing so central to education: Japan has been doing it for decades. Drawing on Japan’s experiences with testing, overtesting, and recent reforms to relax educational pressures, he sheds light on the best path forward for US schools.
           
Bjork asks a variety of important questions related to testing and reform: Does testing overburden students? Does it impede innovation and encourage conformity? Can a system anchored by examination be reshaped to nurture creativity and curiosity? How should any reforms be implemented by teachers? Each chapter explores questions like these with careful attention to the actual effects policies have had on schools in Japan and other Asian settings, and each draws direct parallels to issues that US schools currently face. Offering a wake-up call for American education, Bjork ultimately cautions that the accountability-driven practice of standardized testing might very well exacerbate the precise problems it is trying to solve. 
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front cover of A History of Corporate Governance around the World
A History of Corporate Governance around the World
Family Business Groups to Professional Managers
Edited by Randall K. Morck
University of Chicago Press, 2005
For many Americans, capitalism is a dynamic engine of prosperity that rewards the bold, the daring, and the hardworking. But to many outside the United States, capitalism seems like an initiative that serves only to concentrate power and wealth in the hands of a few hereditary oligarchies. As A History of Corporate Governance around the World shows, neither conception is wrong.

In this volume, some of the brightest minds in the field of economics present new empirical research that suggests that each side of the debate has something to offer the other. Free enterprise and well-developed financial systems are proven to produce growth in those countries that have them. But research also suggests that in some other capitalist countries, arrangements truly do concentrate corporate ownership in the hands of a few wealthy families.

A History of Corporate Governance around the World provides historical studies of the patterns of corporate governance in several countries-including the large industrial economies of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States; larger developing economies like China and India; and alternative models like those of the Netherlands and Sweden.
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front cover of How Schools Meet Students' Needs
How Schools Meet Students' Needs
Inequality, School Reform, and Caring Labor
Katie Kerstetter
Rutgers University Press, 2023
Meeting students’ basic needs – including ensuring they have access to nutritious meals and a sense of belonging and connection to school – can positively influence students’ academic performance. Recognizing this connection, schools provide resources in the form of school meals programs, school nurses, and school guidance counselors. However, these resources are not always available to students and are not always prioritized in school reform policies, which tend to focus more narrowly on academic learning. This book is about the balancing act that schools and their teachers undertake to respond to the social, emotional, and material needs of their students in the context of standardized testing and accountability policies. Drawing on conversations with teachers and classroom observations in two elementary schools, How Schools Meet Students’ Needs explores the factors that both enable and constrain teachers in their efforts to meet students’ needs and the consequences of how schools organize this work on teachers’ labor and students’ learning.
 
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