The Creation of the G.I. Bill of Rights of 1944: Melding Social and Participatory Citizenship Ideals

2005 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 345-374 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suzanne Mettler

The G.I. Bill of Rights, formally known as the Serviceman's Readjustment Act of 1944, remains in the public consciousness as one of the most significant social policies ever enacted in the United States. Established for returning veterans of World War II, its terms of coverage were strikingly broad and generous. Fifty-one percent of veterans used the educational provisions: 2.2 million pursued a college education or graduate degree, and 5.6 million attained vocational or on-the-job training. The law also offered extensive unemployment benefits, which were used to the full by 14 percent of veterans. It also offered low-interest loans for the purchase of homes, farms, and businesses, which were used by 29 percent of veterans.

2020 ◽  
pp. 267-292
Author(s):  
Dominic D. P. Johnson

This chapter presents a summary of the findings and explores the implications of the new evolutionary perspective on cognitive biases for international relations. It concludes that the cognitive biases are adaptive in a way that strategic instincts help individuals, state leaders, and nations achieve their goals. It also reviews effective strategies that often differ radically from those predicted by conventional paradigms, such as the rational choice theory. The chapter offers novel interpretations of historical events, especially the American Revolution, the British appeasement of Hitler in the 1930s, and the United States' Pacific campaign in World War II. It examines counterintuitive strategies for leaders and policymakers to exploit strategic instincts among themselves, the public, and other states.


1975 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 132-142
Author(s):  
Robert G. Craig ◽  
Harry P. Mapp

“There is more than enough evidence to show that the states and localities, far from being weak sisters, have actually been carrying the brunt of domestic governmental progress in the United States ever since the end of World War II … Moreover, they have been largely responsible for undertaking the truly revolutionary change in the role of government in the United States that has occurred over the past decade.”–Daniel J. Elazar, The Public Interest


2019 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
pp. 282-299
Author(s):  
Markus Wild

Abstract This letter focuses on both the recent history of academic philosophy in Switzerland and its present status. Historically, institutional self-consciousness of philosophy came to life during World War II as a reaction to the isolation of international academic life in Switzerland; moreover, the divide between philosophy in the French part and the German part of the country had to be bridged. One important instrument to achieve this end was the creation of the “Schweizerische Philosophische Gesellschaft” and its “Jahrbuch” (today: “Studia philosophica”) in 1940. At the same time the creation of the journal “Dialectica” (1947), the influence of Joseph Maria Bochensky at the University of Fribourg and Henri Lauener at the University of Berne prepared the ground for the flourishing of analytic philosophy in Switzerland. Today analytic philosophy has established a very successful academic enterprise in Switzerland without suppressing other philosophical traditions. Despite the fact that academic philosophy is somewhat present in the public, there is much more potential for actual philosophical research to enter into public consciousness. The outline sketched in this letter is, of course, a limited account of the recent history and present state of philosophy in Switzerland. There is only very little research on this topic.


1973 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-57
Author(s):  
Donald J. Epp

The rapid population growth of the United States and the well documented concentration of that population into a few major metropolitan areas has caused significant amounts of land to shift from agricultural to urban uses. Since World War II, the shifts in land use have caused considerable concern in the Northeast, particularly in those states containing parts of the BosWash megolopolis. Concern over the loss of open space land and the rapid decline in agricultural firms led several state legislatures to consider methods of halting, or at least controlling, the spread of cities into the rural hinterland. Maryland was the first state to pass legislation to protect open space and agriculture, enacting its law in 1955. Connecticut followed with its law in 1963 and New Jersey in 1964. All of these legislative acts declare that it is in the public interest to preserve open space lands, including farms and forests. The wording may vary from state to state but the intent is clear. These legislatures were trying to hold land in open space uses, or at least to avoid forcing their conversion because of high taxes.


PMLA ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 133 (1) ◽  
pp. 205-220
Author(s):  
Sylvia Townsend Warner ◽  
Laurel Harris

In september 1941, shortly before the united states entered world war ii, the british writer sylvia townsend warner wrote a note to the American poet Genevieve Taggard, thanking her for sending a poem. An epistolary relationship developed between the two writers, though Taggard also sent material gifts of spices, tea, rice, and seeds to alleviate the deprivations that Warner and her partner, Valentine Ackland, faced in war-battered England. Eighteen letters, all from Warner to Taggard, remain of this correspondence, which ended with Taggard's death in 1948. They are housed in Taggard's papers at the Manuscripts and Archives Division of the New York Public Library. Although Taggard's letters to Warner have been lost, Warner's letters to Taggard reveal a literary friendship that is at once partisan and poetic. These private letters, like the public “Letter from London” columns by Warner's fellow New Yorker contributor Mollie Panter-Downes, vividly portray the English home front to an American audience.


2020 ◽  
pp. 7-20
Author(s):  
Justyna Włodarczyk

The article uses posthumanism and animal studies as a framework for making sense of B.F. Skinner’s wartime project of training pigeons to guide missiles, with emphasis on explaining the negative response of the donors and the public. The article first considers the hypothesis that the donors’ incredulity was evoked by the species of the animal. During World War II the United States began a massive program for the training of dogs for the military, and the campaign received unanimously positive publicity in the media. Possibly, thus, dogs were perceived as capable of bravery and sacrifice while pigeons were not. However, messenger pigeons had been traditionally incorporated into the war machine and were perceived as heroic. Thus, the analysis moves on to suggest that the perception of the project as ridiculous was related to the type of behavior performed by the animals: a behavior perceived as trained (artificially acquired) and not instinctive. The analysis then shifts into how the distinction between what is perceived as instinctive (natural) and learned (artificial) behavior influences the reception of different performances involving animals. Performances built around “natural” behaviors generate much stronger positive responses, even if the naturalness of these behaviors is a carefully crafted effect.


MRS Bulletin ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 18 (9) ◽  
pp. 32-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
George G. Wicks ◽  
Alexander R. Lodding ◽  
Martin A. Molecke

The United States is at an important crossroads in its management of high-level radioactive waste (HLW). It is presently in the process of changing over from a strategy that was developed during World War II, which involves storing HLW in a relatively mobile liquid form, to a strategy of the 1990s, which involves removing and isolating potentially harmful radionuclides and immobilizing them into solid and inert forms, more specifically, borosilicate glass. The resulting waste glass products will then be permanently disposed of by deep burial, within stable geologic formations, where they become one element of a multibarrier waste-isolation system. This barrier system is designed to retain radionuclides so they can be permanently isolated from the public and from the accessible environment. Important contributing factors to the success of this strategy include the excellent stability and technical performance of waste glass forms and the ability of the glass, as well as waste package materials, to retain radionuclides even when exposed to potential leachants within a repository environment.


Author(s):  
M. Bazaieva

The article explores the incipience of veterans' policies in the United States of America during 1940-1956. This period is notable in veterans' history. This is caused not only by social realities after World War II but by the implementation of brand-new fundamental principles in process of forming veterans' policies. These principles opened a new page in interactions between the government and the veteran community. The article analyzes drafting the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the G.I. Bill of Rights, as well as public discussions around it initiated by President Roosevelt's Administration. One of the main actors of the process was American Legion, influential conservative veterans' organization. The law presented by Legion was passed by Congress. The Act took effect on June 22, 1944, and lasted until 1956. G.I. Bill of Rights guaranteed numerous benefits for veterans in variable spheres of social policies, including medical care, education, housing and business loans, unemployment compensations. The most significant effect had educational programs of G.I. Bill. About 8 million American veterans, including women and African Americans, exercised their right to attend schools, colleges, and universities. Educational programs had great implications both for the veterans' population and social affairs, especially the educational system in the United States. Higher education became more widespread and democratic after the implementation of the G.I. Bill. World War II veterans had the opportunity to realize their potential in different fields, in particular in the political area. G.I. Bill of Rights had a great impact on forming the image of the veteran in the USA. The Act demonstrated the new role of veterans' policies in the context of government activities. Besides, thanks to the educational programs of the G.I. Bill veteran community became a proactive social group that played an important role in the US policy-making in the second half of the 20th century.


2015 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 106-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Morris

Payroll taxes and payroll deductions became ubiquitous in the United States by the mid-1940s, crucial to the financing of the emerging “mixed” welfare state as well as World War II. While scholars have firmly established the importance of elements of the warfare/welfare state such as Social Security, employer-based pensions and health insurance, and the mass income tax, voluntary sector institutions have garnered less attention. The history of payroll deduction demonstrates how this “infrastructural power” also advantaged institutions outside of the state, notably, charitable fundraising organizations commonly known as Community Chests (the forerunners of the United Way). Chests began to look toward the payroll deduction in the 1920s as an efficient and effective way of extracting donations from workers of modest means—though these were often fiercely resisted by an empowered labor movement in the 1930s. But it took the state's vast expansion of deductions during World War II, and the patriotic impulse of donating to war-related charities, to convince industrial unions and employers to support this method of donation. Like the income tax, this change in charitable giving remained in place after the war and became a vital element of financing this part of the public–private social safety net—a crucial boost to the voluntary sector from the state.


2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
RICHARD F. TEICHGRAEBER

The still astonishing expansion of the American university since World War II has transformed the nation's intellectual and cultural life in myriad ways. Most intellectual historians familiar with this period would agree, I suppose, that among the conspicuous changes is the sheer increase in the size and diversity of intellectual and cultural activity taking place on campuses across the country. After all, we know that colleges and universities that employ us also provide full- and part-time academic appointments to novelists, poets, playwrights, filmmakers, choreographers, composers, classical and jazz musicians, painters, photographers, and sculptors, even though most of them probably began their careers with little or no desire to join us in the halls of academe. This now widespread employment practice has decentralized the nation's literary and artistic talent. It also has made for a manifold increase in degree-granting programs in writing and the creative arts. One example will suffice here. When World War II ended, there were a small handful of university-based creative-writing programs. Over the course of the next thirty years, the number increased to fifty-two. By 1985, there were some 150 graduate degree programs offering an MA, MFA, or PhD. As of 2004, there were more than 350 creative-writing programs in the United States, all staffed by practicing writers and poets, many of whom now also hold advanced degrees in creative writing. (If one includes current undergraduate degree programs, the number grows to 720.)


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