The Advocates on WJUP

The Atomic Bombings of Japan: Right or Wrong?-Professor Donald Goldstein

Wednesday, August 8, 2012, at 11:00 am, I am hosting my show, The Advocates on WVOX- 1460 AM, my guest is Professor Donald M. Goldstein and our subject is the atomic bombings of Japan and whether they were right or wrong!

Donald M. Goldstein, Ph.D. (University of Denver) is a retired Air Force officer who served for 22 years.  He is currently a Professor Emeritus of Public and International Affairs at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh.  He has taught at the Air Force Academy, the Air War College, the Air Command and Staff College, the University of Tampa, Troy State University and the University of Pittsburgh. 

A former Associate Dean at this school, he is currently on the faculties of Asian Studies, Eastern European, Western European, and the Honors College programs at the University of Pittsburgh.   He is currently the Associate Director of the Matthew Ridgway Center for International Security Studies.

Dr. Goldstein is author or co-author of over 70 articles and 27 books.  His most famous is At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor, which is in its 20^th printing.  The book was first runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize in 1982 and was on the New York Times bestseller list for 47 weeks.  His book, Miracle at Midway, was on the bestseller lists for 9 weeks.  Other books by Goldstein and his associates include December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor: The Verdict of History, The Williwaw War (the story of the Arkansas national guard in World War II Alaska), Target Tokyo: The Story of the Sorge Spy Ring, Nuts: The Story of the Battle of the Bulge, D-Day Normandy, The Spanish-American War, Vietnam, The Korean War, Fading Victory: The Autobiography of Admiral M. Ugaki, The Pearl Harbor Papers, and a biography of Amelia Earhart.  All the above books were Book-of-the-Month Club, History Book Club or Military Book Club selections.

Averaging over 200 talks a year to radio, TV and civic organizations, Dr. Goldstein has been awarded two Peabody awards for work on “Pearl Harbor: Two Hours that Changed the World” with David Brinkley (ABC), and “D-Day: A Soldier’s Story” with Peter Jennings (ABC).  His teaching awards include: 14 straight teaching certificates for outstanding teaching from the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs; 7 times teacher of the year, Air Command and Staff College; award for teaching excellence from the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration (NASPAA, 1999).  In 2002, he was awarded the Chancellor's Distinguished Teaching Award at the University of Pittsburgh. His latest book is about Jimmy Doolittle and the Bombing of Tokyo.

In addition to his Ph.D. from the University of Denver, Dr. Goldstein holds a Bachelor of Arts, three masters degrees and is a graduate of the Air Command and Staff College and the Air War College.  He is a consultant for ABC, NBC, NHK, the Discovery Channel, A&E, the History Channel, and the Disney Channel.  He is currently working on two books:  World War I and World War II in the Southwest Pacific, to be published in 2003.  Professor Goldstein is a contributor to such programs as Good Morning America, the Today Show, Larry King Live and C-Span. 

In 2006, Goldstein donated his private collection of historical World War II materials to Pitt, including about 4,400 books, 13,000 photographs, 300 films and videotapes, and transcripts of 200 interviews with Japanese and American participants in the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Goldstein Collection, independently appraised at $890,000, pushed Pitt's Discover a World of Possibilities capital campaign past the $1 billion mark in gifts and pledges.

D-Day and How it Came About-John McLaughlin

Wednesday, June 6, 2012 at 12:00 Noon, I am hosting my show, The Advocates on WVOX- 1460 AM, my guest is lawyer and WWII veteran, John J. McLaughlin, the author of the new biography of WW II’s General Albert Wedemeyer, and our subject is “D-Day, on its 68^th Anniversary. Its Historical Impact and How it Came About.”

Dr. John J. McLaughlin is the author of General Albert C. Wedemeyer America's Unsung Strategist in World War II, just released by Casemate Publishers of Havertown PA and Oxford England.

Like many heroes of the Second World War, General Albert C. Wedemeyer's career has been largely overshadowed by such well-known figures as Marshall, Patton, Montgomery, and Bradley. Wedemeyer's legacy as the main planner of the D-Day invasion is almost completely forgotten today, eclipsed by politics and the capriciousness of human nature. Yet during America's preparation for the war, Wedemeyer was the primary author of the "Victory Program" that mobilized US resources and directed them at crucial points in order to secure victory over the Axis.

This is Dr. McLaughlin's first book. He is a practicing attorney with offices in Somerville, NJ where he works with his son Michael McLaughlin. The firm specializes in Commercial and Bankruptcy work. Dr. McLaughlin is a graduate of Seton Hall University and Seton Hall Law School. He also attended Drew University where he earned a Master's Degree in Literature, a Master's Degree in Theology, Magna Cum Laude, and a doctorate in History. His dissertation was about General Wedemeyer, which he has now expanded into book form.

McLaughlin is a veteran of World War II having served 1 1/2 years in the United States Army with the Occupation forces in Japan immediately following World War II. After graduation from college he served another two years during the Korean War as an officer in the Military Police Corps in the capacity of Assistant Confinement Officer of the Military Prison Fort Meade MD.

Dr. McLaughlin is the founder and director of the New Jersey World War II Book Club which has been existence for three years. The book club meets at the Millburn, NJ Public Library and hostes monthly lectures by historians and authors interested in World War II. The web site of the Book Club is: http://ww2bookclub.blogspot.com. Dr. McLaughlin is a frequent lecturer on subjects dealing with World War II.

The Arab Spring- Prospects for Peace and American Politics- Michael Cohen

Friday, November 4, 2011, at 11:00 am, I am hosting my show, The Advocates on WVOX- 1460 AM, my guest is Michael A. Cohen, author and commentator about American politics and issues. Mr. Cohen last visited The Advocates on October 20, 2010 and we discussed: “Politics, the Tea Party and Governing through Stalemate.”

Michael A. Cohen is a Senior Fellow at the American Security Project and is author of Live From the Campaign Trail: The Greatest Presidential Campaign Speeches of the 20th Century and How They Shaped Modern America (Walker Books: 2008). He has also been a Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation and the World Policy Institute.

Michael’s research has focused on the growing role and influence of non-state actors. He has written on the issue of private military contractors, reforming the foreign assistance bureaucracy (with a particular focus on democracy promotion) and improving aid coordination between private and public actors. Michael is a regular blogger a www.democracyarsenal.org and writes a weekly column for AOLNews. Michael serves on the board of the National Security Network and has taught at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.

Previously, Michael served in the U.S. Department of State as chief speechwriter for U.S. Representative to the United Nations Bill Richardson and Undersecretary of State Stuart Eizenstat. He has worked at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Foreign Policy magazine, and as chief speechwriter for Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT). He was a Senior Vice President at the strategic communications firm of Robinson, Lerer and Montgomery and has worked on political campaigns both in the United States and overseas.

A frequent commentator on politics and international affairs his work has been published in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Christian Science Monitor, Dissent, World Politics Review, Newsweek, the World Policy Journal, Politico, Foreign Policy, the New York Daily News, Forbes.com, the St. Petersburg Times, Courier de la Planete, Worth Magazine and he offers commentary on national politics and foreign policy at Talkingpointsmemo.com. During the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign he was a regular contributor to the New York Times Campaign Stops blog. He has also been featured on ABC News, Good Morning America NOW, Fox News, BBC TV, South African television, Al Jazeera, al Hurra, Press TV, Air America, WNYC’s The Brian Lehrer Show, Pacifica Radio and XM Radio’s Potus ‘08

“The GOP's blatantly partisan love for Bibi obscures a dangerous reality: that unwavering support for Israel actually hurts wider U.S. interests in the Middle East. “ 5-4-11

FDR's Death and the Emergence of the Cold War.-Professor frank Costigliola

On Wednesday, March 21, 2012, at 12:00 Noon, I will be hosting my show The Advocates on WVOX- 1460 AM, my guest is University of Connecticut Professor Frank Costigliola, the author of Roosevelt’s Lost Alliances, How Personal Politics Helped Start the Cold War, and our subject is “FDR’s Death and the Emergence of the Cold War.”

Frank Costigliola has been teaching at the University of Connecticut since 1998. Previously he taught for twenty-six years at the University of Rhode Island. A recipient of fellowships from the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the Guggenheim foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Norwegian Nobel Institute, he received in 2002, the Chancellor's award for excellence in research and the Alumni Association's award for excellence in research. In 2009, he served as president of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR).

He is currently editing the diaries of George F. Kennan, which extend from 1924 to 2004. His most recent book, Roosevelt’s Lost Alliances: How Personal Politics Helped Start the Cold War, was published by Princeton University Press in January 2012.  Professor Costigliola was raised in Rockland County, NY and earned degrees at Hamilton College and Cornell University.

The following are some of Professor Costigliola’s works: "Broken Circle: The Isolation of Franklin D. Roosevelt in World War II" in Diplomatic History (November 2008). "Reading for Meaning: Theory, Language, and Metaphor" in Michael Hogan and Thomas G. Paterson (eds.), Explaining American Foreign Relations History, 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003). "Doing and Defining U.S. Foreign Relations: A Primer" (a revision of Thomas G. Paterson's 1991 essay in ibid. "Language and Power in the Western Alliance," in Kathleen Burk and Melvyn Stokes (eds.), The United States and European Alliance Since 1945 (Oxford, U.K., 2000)  "'I Had Come as a Friend': Emotion, Culture, and Ambiguity in the Formation of the Cold War," Cold War History (August 2000),  "`Mixed Up' and `Contact': Culture and Emotion among the Allies in the Second World War," International History Review (December 1998), "`Unceasing Pressure for Penetration': Gender, Pathology, and Emotion in George Kennan's Formation of the Cold War," The Journal of American History (March 1997), 1309-39. "The Nuclear Family: Tropes of Gender and Pathology in the Western Alliance," Diplomatic History (Spring 1997),."Kennedy, the European Allies, and the Failure to Consult," Political Science Quarterly (Spring 1995), "An 'Arm Around the Shoulder': The United States, NATO and German Reunification, 1989-90," Contemporary European History, (July 1994), 87-110. France and the United States: The Cold Alliance Since World War II (New York: Twayne/Macmillan, 1992). Awkward Dominion: American Political, Economic, and Cultural Relations with Europe, 1919-1933 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984, 1987, 2010).

  

 

Why American Politics is Still in FDR's Shadow-Terry Golway

On Wednesday, February 1, 2012, at 12:00 Noon, I will be hosting my show The Advocates on WVOX- 1460 AM, my guest is the Terry Golway, author of Together We Cannot Fail, FDR and the American Presidency in Years of Crisis.

Our subject is the legacy of FDR on his 130^th Birthday and the coming 80^th anniversary of his election in 1932 and why the giant shadow of the New Deal still affects politics today!” Professor Golway last appeared on The Advocates on January 27, 2010.

Terry Golway is the director of the John Kean Center for American History at Kean University in Union, N.J. A former member of the New York Times Editorial Board and city editor of the New York Observer, he is the author of several books, including:

* “Together We Cannot Fail,” a study of Franklin Roosevelt’s speeches.

* “Fellow Citizens,” the Penguin Book of Inaugural Addresses, co-written with Robert Remini;

*  “Let Every Nation Know,” a study of John F. Kennedy’s speeches;

*   “Washington’s General,” a biography of Nathanael Greene;

*  “So Others Might Live,” a history of the Fire Department of New York;

*  “For the Cause of Liberty,” a history of Irish nationalism;

* “Irish Rebel,” a biography of the Irish-American journalist John Devoy.

Golway served as a consultant to the Museum of the City of New York for its 2008 exhibit, “Catholics in New York,” and he edited a book of essays about Catholics in New York published by Fordham University Press.  He was awarded his PhD from Rutgers University.

Golway has appeared on several documentaries on PBS and the History Channel. He has been a guest speaker at George Washington’s Mount Vernon, the Society of the Cincinnati of New England, New York University’s Ireland House, the New College of California, Catholic University of America, and Fordham University’s Bishop Hughes Center for Culture and Religion. He is a frequent contributor to American Heritage, The Boston Globe, and The New York Times.

He recently was interviewed WCBS News 88 by Wayne Cabot on the anniversary of Pearl Harbor: http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2011/12/08/nj-professor-looks-back-on-fdrs-handling-of-pearl-harbor-using-radio/

 

The Myths of Pearl Harbor-70 Years Later-Professor Don Goldstein

Wednesday, December 7, 2011, at 11:00 am, I am hosting my show, The Advocates on WVOX- 1460 AM, my guest is Professor Donald M. Goldstein and the subject is the “Myths of Pearl Harbor, 70 years later.”

Donald M. Goldstein, Ph.D. (University of Denver) is a retired Air Force officer who served for 22 years.  He is currently a Professor Emeritus of Public and International Affairs at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh.  He has taught at the Air Force Academy, the Air War College, the Air Command and Staff College, the University of Tampa, Troy State University and the University of Pittsburgh.  A former Associate Dean at this school, he is currently on the faculties of Asian Studies, Eastern European, Western European, and the Honors College programs at the University of Pittsburgh.   He is currently the Associate Director of the Matthew Ridgway Center for International Security Studies.

Dr. Goldstein is author or co-author of over 70 articles and 27 books.  His most famous is At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor, which is in its 20^th printing.  The book was first runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize in 1982 and was on the New York Times bestseller list for 47 weeks.  His book, Miracle at Midway, was on the bestseller lists for 9 weeks.  Other books by Goldstein and his associates include December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor: The Verdict of History, The Williwaw War (the story of the Arkansas national guard in World War II Alaska), Target Tokyo: The Story of the Sorge Spy Ring, Nuts: The Story of the Battle of the Bulge, D-Day Normandy, The Spanish-American War, Vietnam, The Korean War, Fading Victory: The Autobiography of Admiral M. Ugaki, The Pearl Harbor Papers, and a biography of Amelia Earhart.  All the above books were Book-of-the-Month Club, History Book Club or Military Book Club selections.

Averaging over 200 talks a year to radio, TV and civic organizations, Dr. Goldstein has been awarded two Peabody awards for work on “Pearl Harbor: Two Hours that Changed the World” with David Brinkley (ABC), and “D-Day: A Soldier’s Story” with Peter Jennings (ABC).  His teaching awards include: 14 straight teaching certificates for outstanding teaching from the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs; 7 times teacher of the year, Air Command and Staff College; award for teaching excellence from the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration (NASPAA, 1999).  In 2002, he was awarded the Chancellor's Distinguished Teaching Award at the University of Pittsburgh. His latest book is about Jimmy Doolittle and the Bombing of Tokyo.

In addition to his Ph.D. from the University of Denver, Dr. Goldstein holds a Bachelor of Arts, three masters degrees and is a graduate of the Air Command and Staff College and the Air War College.  He is a consultant for ABC, NBC, NHK, the Discovery Channel, A&E, the History Channel, and the Disney Channel.  He is currently working on two books:  World War I and World War II in the Southwest Pacific, to be published in 2003.  Professor Goldstein is a contributor to such programs as Good Morning America, the Today Sh Larry King Live and C-Span.

 

Public and Workforce Housing:Solutions to a Worsening Crisis, with Alex Roberts

On Wednesday, March 13, 2013, at 12:00 Noon, I will be hosting my show The Advocates on WVOX- my guest is Alexander Roberts, Executive Director of Community Housing Innovations and our subject is “Public and Work- force Housing: Solutions to a Worsening Crisis.”

As Executive Director of Community Housing Innovations (CHI) since its inception, Alexander Roberts has overseen the acquisition of 500 houses and apartments in Westchester, Ulster, Nassau and Suffolk Counties, with a budget of $20 million a year.  CHI was cited in 2002 as one of the nation’s fastest growing housing nonprofits by the consulting firm of McKinsey and Company.

Mr. Roberts founded CHI in 1991, after spending nearly 20 years as a television news correspondent.  He was a reporter and anchor for WVIR-TV in Charlottesville, Virginia, WRGB-TV in Albany, and WPIX-TV in New York City.  He won numerous awards for his reporting, including two Emmy Nominations and the Associated Press Broadcasters Award for General Excellence in Individual Reporting.

After covering the welfare hotel scandals in the late eighties in New York City, Mr. Roberts decided to leave broadcasting for a career in affordable housing development and human services.

In 1991, Suffolk County, New York faced a crisis in which nearly 500 families were homeless--the majority in unsupervised welfare hotels.   Children were living in crowded, vermin-infested rooms, with drugs freely available.    Working with the Suffolk County Department of Social Services, Mr. Roberts developed a supervised motel model.  He negotiated agreements with motel owners that established on site CHI offices, with caseworkers to assist the homeless in finding housing and services.   CHI monitored health and safety standards and families were required to execute “self-sufficiency contracts” with CHI social workers.   CHI relocated thousands of families into permanent and transitional housing, ultimately resulting in the closure of the welfare hotels by 1996.

In 1994, Roberts proposed an emergency housing strategy to Westchester County that allowed the agency to acquire multi-family buildings. Leveraging tens of millions of dollars in grants, low interest loans, and bank mortgages, Roberts negotiated the acquisition of nearly 500 units of housing for the poor and those with special needs in Westchester County and Long Island.

In 1996, under Roberts’ guidance, CHI began developing partnerships with services organizations that lacked the housing development expertise to compete for federal HUD Supportive Housing Program grants.    With these organizations providing the case management for individuals with special needs--such as the developmentally disabled and mentally ill--CHI obtained grants totaling over $9 million to develop supportive housing for these populations. CHI received Best Practices recognition from HUD in 2000.

Also in that year, Mr. Roberts started a division to assist families in realizing the dream of home ownership.   Called “Renters into Owners,” the program included CHI’s purchase and renovation of more than 100 homes for sale for as little as no money down to first time home buyers.  Since then, Mr. Roberts has established a nonprofit brokerage subsidiary catering to first time homebuyers, as well as a management and development company.  CHI’s home ownership division annually administers about $1 million in grants to first time home buyers under contract with the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal, the New York State Affordable Housing Corporation, and the Federal Home Loan Bank of New York. To date, as Local Program Administrator for NYS Homes and Community Renewal, the agency has enabled 450 households to become homeowners with down payment assistance and free counseling.  The agency’s grant recipients have had a default rate far below the national average.

Mr. Roberts came to the energy efficiency movement early and completed the Energy Management Certification course sponsored by the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal in January 2002.  He has utilized the NYSERDA Multifamily Performance Program for nine of CHI’s existing buildings, coupling it with Weatherization.  In 2009, CHI developed and built a 14-unit condominium in White Plains that was the first to meet all of the requirements of the New York State Energy $mart Low Rise Multifamily Performance Program and the first to utilize geothermal heat pumps for heating and cooling in White Plains. CHI has also authorized energy audits and retrofits for dozens of its residential properties under the National Grid and New York State Weatherization programs.

Mr. Roberts is active in volunteer community efforts, serving as a member of the Board of Directors of the Supportive Housing Network of New York.  He sits on the Tarrytown Moderate Income Housing Board and Tarrytown Environmental Advisory Council.  Mr. Roberts served as president of the Westchester Symphony Orchestra from 1996 to 1998. He is married to Barbara G. Roberts, a First Vice President and Senior Financial Advisor for Merrill Lynch, named in 2011 by Registered Rep magazine among the top 50 women in the nation among advisors in brokerage firms and banks ("Wirehouse Women”). 

 

The Struggle over Women's Reproductive Rights with Ellen Chesler

Wednesday, November 30, 2011, at 12:00 Noon, I am hosting my show, The Advocates on WVOX- 1460, my guest is author and historian Dr. Ellen Chesler and we will be talking about Margaret Sanger, the struggle over women’s reproductive rights, and the revisionist attacks of the right wing on Planned Parenthood.

Dr. Chesler is currently a Senior Fellow at the Four Freedoms Center of the Roosevelt Institute, an innovative New York City- based think tank that promotes ideas, influences policy and nurtures young talent, all by way of creating a living legacy for Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, whose presidential library in Hyde Park, the institute also supports. She is shaping the institute’s new policy program on human rights while also helping to expand overall public programming.

From 2007-2010,  she was Distinguished Lecturer and Director of the Eleanor Roosevelt Initiative on Women and Public Policy at Roosevelt House, the new public policy institute of Hunter College of the City University of New York.  She played a central role in defining the institute’s three part mission: engaging students through the development of policy courses; supporting the faculty in applied policy research and advocacy; and sponsoring lectures, seminars, and conferences, most prominently “Aspen at Roosevelt House,” a discussion and lecture series in collaboration with the Aspen Institute that attracted large and enthusiastic audiences.

For nearly ten years prior, Dr. Chesler served as a senior fellow and program director at the Open Society Institute, the international foundation started by George Soros, where she helped develop and execute the foundation's multi-million dollar global investments in reproductive health and women’s rights and advised on a range of other program initiatives.  Her work with women combined support for policy research and advocacy, public education, and litigation with strategic investments in new birth control products and model service innovations that promise long-term benefits in public health in the United States and in many countries around the world.

Dr. Chesler is author of the critically celebrated Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America.  A finalist for PEN's 1993 Martha Albrand award in nonfiction, the book was released in a new paperback edition in 2007. She is also co-editor of Where Human Rights Begin: Health, Sexuality and Women in the New Millennium, Rutgers University Press, 2005, and she has written numerous essays and articles in academic anthologies and in newspapers and periodicals including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Nation, the New Republic, the American Prospect, and the Women's Review of Books. She has written blogs for New Deal 2.0, the on-line publication of the Roosevelt Institute, for the Huffington Post and other web-sites.

Dr. Chesler has extensive experience as a voluntary leader with non-governmental organizations.  She currently chairs the nominating committee of the board of directors of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. And she serves on the Advisory Committee of the Women’s Rights Division of Human Rights Watch, which she chaired for six years. From 1997 to 2003, she chaired the board of the International Women's Health Coalition. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.  In 2009 and 2010, she served as a U.S. public delegate at meetings of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.  She has also long been active in Democratic politics, especially on behalf of women candidates, most recently New York Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Early in her professional career, Dr. Chesler was chief of staff to New York City Council President Carol Bellamy, who was the first woman ever elected to city wide office in New York. An honors graduate of Vassar College, Chesler earned her masters and doctoral degrees in history at Columbia University.  She is married to New York lawyer, Matthew Mallow, and they are the parents of two adult children.

Fighting for our Healthcare-An Insider's View with Richard Kirsch

On Wednesday, February 22, 2012, at 12:00 Noon, I will be hosting my show The Advocates on WVOX- 1460 AM. My guest is the Roosevelt Fellow Richard Kirsch, author of Fighting For Our Health, and our subject is “An Insider’s Account of the Epic Health Care Battle.”

Richard Kirsch is a Senior Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute and the author of Fighting for Our Health: The Epic Battle to Make Health Care a Right in the United States, published in February 2012, by the Rockefeller Institute Press. He is also Senior Adviser to USAction and an Institute Fellow at the Rockefeller Institute.

Prior to joining the Roosevelt Institute, Mr. Kirsch was the National Campaign Manager of Health Care for America Now from the Campaign’s founding to its successful conclusion in April 2010. HCAN is an 1,100 member coalition, led by major progressive organizations, that deployed staff in 44 states and spent $47 million to organize for comprehensive health care reform. As HCAN’s chief spokesperson, Mr. Kirsch appeared on PBS’s The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, CNN, ABC’s World News Tonight and Good Morning America, Fox, CSPAN, and the Colbert Report and was frequently quoted in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and other national newspapers, as well as NPR’s Morning Edition, All Things Considered and Marketplace. Mr. Kirsch now serves as a Senior Advisor to HCAN. 

From 1985 to 2008 Mr. Kirsch served as Executive Director of Citizen Action of New York, a grassroots citizen’s organization with 20,000 members and seven offices in New York. Mr. Kirsch also served as Executive Director of the Public Policy and Education Fund of New York, a research and educational foundation affiliated with Citizen Action.

Mr. Kirsch has led successful campaigns to provide affordable, comprehensive health coverage to more than one-million working families in New York. He is an author of New York’s Managed Care Consumer Bill of Rights, among the strongest HMO protection laws in the country. 

Mr. Kirsch helped direct a 1998 ballot initiative campaign that resulted in dramatic improvements in New York City’s system of providing public financing of elections.

Mr. Kirsch is the author of several studies on health care reform including: the Managed Care Bill of Rights: A Health Care Policy Guide for Consumer Advocates; the financing of universal health care; health and health system global budgeting; and risk management. He has published oped pieces on health care, tax policy, telecommunications, energy policy and election reform. Mr. Kirsch is also the author of several reports on the financing of election campaigns in New York.

Mr. Kirsch was honored by Families USA in January 2001 as national Health Care Consumer Advocate of the Year. He received the New York Statewide Senior Action Council Human Services Advocacy Award for “his vision, boldness and relentless dedication in pursuit of health care for all” in June 1995.

Mr. Kirsch received a B.A. with honors from Brown University in 1974 and an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago in 1980. He as worked for USAction affiliates since 1980 serving as the Financial Director of what is now Citizen Action of Illinois and as a founding co-Director of New Jersey Citizen Action. He has worked for Citizen Action of New York since 1985. His first public interest job was with Ralph Nader’s Public Citizen.

 Meanwhile, the mission of the “Advocates” is to bring to the public differing views on current public policy issues. Public policy, therefore, is what we as a nation legally and traditionally follow.

   

"Saving the Jews "with Professors Richard Breitman and Alan Lichtman

The Advocates

"FDR and the Jews”

A Balanced View!

with

 Richard Breitman and Allan Lichtman

 WVOX – AM Radio 1460- 12 Noon Wednesday

April 10, 2013

Wednesday, April 3, 2013, at 12:00 Noon, I am hosting my show, The Advocates on WVOX- 1460 AM.  My guests are historians Professor Richard Breitman and Distinguished Professor Allan Lichtman. Our subject is the FDR record regarding: immigration, the Holocaust, isolationism, the bombing of Auschwitz, the War Refugee Board, Yalta and Palestine.

Richard Breitman is the author or co-author of ten books and many articles in German history, U. S. history, and the Holocaust.   He is Distinguished Professor at American University and is also editor of the journal Holocaust and Genocide Studies. 

Breitman’s book The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution (New York: Knopf, 1991) won the Fraenkel Prize for Contemporary History and was translated into five languages.  Another book Official Secrets: What the Nazis Planned, What the British and Americans Knew (New York: Hill and Wang, 1998), has also appeared in five foreign languages. 

Breitman served as lead editor of the first two volumes of the diaries and papers of James G. McDonald (League of Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 1933-35, and chairman of President Roosevelt’s Advisory Committee on Political Refugees, 1938-1945), part of a four-volume series published by Indiana University Press in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 

Breitman’s 2011 book Hitler’s Shadow, co-authored with Norman J. W. Goda, dealt with the fate of Nazi war criminals and collaborators in the postwar period.  It was based largely on newly declassified documents from the United States National Archives. Breitman served as director of historical research for the Nazi War Criminal Records and Imperial Japanese Records Interagency Working Group, which helped to bring about declassification of more than eight million pages of U.S. government records under a 1998 law. 

FDR and the Jews (March 2013), co-authored with Allan J. Lichtman, is the product of more than twenty-five years of research and thinking about Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Allan Lichtman was born in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn in New York City. He graduated from Stuyvesant High School. He received his B.A. degree from Brandeis University in History in 1967, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa and Magna Cum Laude while also running track and wrestling for the school. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University as a Graduate Prize Fellow in 1973, also in history. He began teaching at American University in 1973, rising to chair of the History Department, and was named Scholar/Professor of the Year in 1993. Outside of the classroom, He has testified as an expert witness on civil rights in more than 70 cases for the U.S. Department of Justice and for civil rights groups such as the NAACP, the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund and Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, and the Southern Poverty Law Center. He also consulted for Vice President Al Gore and Senator Edward Kennedy. He assisted the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights investigation into voting irregularities in Florida during the 2000 election, submitting an extensive report of his statistical analysis of balloting problems. Lichtman concluded "there were major racial disparities in ballot rejection rates".

Alan Lichtman has received numerous awards at American University during his career. Most notably, he was named Outstanding Scholar/Teacher for 1992-93, the highest faculty award at that school. Other honors include:

Richard Breitman is the author or co-author of ten books and many articles in German history, U. S. history, and the Holocaust.   He is Distinguished Professor at American University and is also editor of the journal Holocaust and Genocide Studies. 

 

Breitman’s book The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution (New York: Knopf, 1991) won the Fraenkel Prize for Contemporary History and was translated into five languages.  Another book Official Secrets: What the Nazis Planned, What the British and Americans Knew (New York: Hill and Wang, 1998), has also appeared in five foreign languages. 

 

Breitman served as lead editor of the first two volumes of the diaries and papers of James G. McDonald (League of Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 1933-35, and chairman of President Roosevelt’s Advisory Committee on Political Refugees, 1938-1945), part of a four-volume series published by Indiana University Press in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 

 

 

Breitman’s 2011 book Hitler’s Shadow, co-authored with Norman J. W. Goda, dealt with the fate of Nazi war criminals and collaborators in the postwar period.  It was based largely on newly declassified documents from the United States National Archives.

Breitman served as director of historical research for the Nazi War Criminal Records and Imperial Japanese Records Interagency Working Group, which helped to bring about declassification of more than eight million pages of U.S. government records under a 1998 law. 

 FDR and the Jews (March 2013), co-authored with Allan J. Lichtman, is the product of more than twenty-five years of research and thinking about Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Allan Lichtman was born in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn in New York City. He graduated from Stuyvesant High School. He received his B.A. degree from Brandeis University in History in 1967, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa and Magna Cum Laude while also running track and wrestling for the school. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University as a Graduate Prize Fellow in 1973, also in history.

He began teaching at American University in 1973, rising to chair of the History Department, and was named Scholar/Professor of the Year in 1993. Outside of the classroom, He has testified as an expert witness on civil rights in more than 70 cases for the U.S. Department of Justice and for civil rights groups such as the NAACP, the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund and Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, and the Southern Poverty Law Center. He also consulted for Vice President Al Gore and Senator Edward Kennedy. He assisted the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights investigation into voting irregularities in Florida during the 2000 election, submitting an extensive report of his statistical analysis of balloting problems. Lichtman concluded "there were major racial disparities in ballot rejection rates".

Alan Lichtman has received numerous awards at American University during his career. Most notably, he was named Outstanding Scholar/Teacher for 1992-93, the highest faculty award at that school. Other honors include:

• Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Visiting Scholar, California Institute of Technology, 1980–81
• Top Speaker Award, National Convention of the International Platform Association, 1983, 1984, 1987
• Selected by the Teaching Company as one of America's "Super Star Teachers"

Also, in the early 1980s while living in California as a visiting professor at the California Institute of Technology, He is the author or co-author of eight books and more than 200 articles. He is best known for the "Keys" system, presented in his books The Thirteen Keys to the Presidency and The Keys to the White House. The system uses thirteen historical factors to predict whether or not the popular vote in the election for President of the United States will be won by the candidate of the party holding the presidency (regardless of whether the President is the candidate). The keys were selected based on their correlations with the presidential election results from 1860 through 1980, using statistical methods adapted from the work of geophysicist Vladimir Keilis-Borok for predicting earthquakes. The system then correctly predicted the popular vote winner in each of the elections of 1984 through 2012, including 2000. Lichtman has provided commentary for networks and cable channels. He was the regular political analyst for CNN Headline News.

 

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