Harvard's searing and sobering indictment of its own long-standing relationship with chattel slavery and anti-Black discrimination. In recent years, scholars have documented extensive relationships between American higher education and slavery. The Legacy of Slavery at Harvard adds Harvard University to the long list of institutions, in the North and the South, entangled with slavery and its aftermath. The report, written by leading researchers from across the university, reveals hard truths about Harvard's deep ties to Black and Indigenous bondage, scientific racism, segregation, and other forms of oppression. Between the university's founding in 1636 and 1783, when slavery officially ended in Massachusetts, Harvard leaders, faculty, and staff enslaved at least seventy people, some of whom worked on campus, where they cared for students, faculty, and university presidents. Harvard also benefited financially and reputationally from donations by slaveholders, slave traders, and others whose fortunes depended on human chattel. Later, Harvard professors and the graduates they trained were leaders in so-called race science and eugenics, which promoted disinvestment in Black lives through forced sterilization, residential segregation, and segregation and discrimination in education. No institution of Harvard's scale and longevity is a monolith. Harvard was also home to abolitionists and pioneering Black thinkers and activists such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Charles Hamilton Houston, and Eva Beatrice Dykes. In the late twentieth century, the university became a champion of racial diversity in education. Yet the past cannot help casting a long shadow on the present. Harvard's motto, Veritas, inscribed on gates, doorways, and sculptures all over campus, is an exhortation to pursue truth. The Legacy of Slavery at Harvard advances that necessary quest.

The leading case of The Mayor, Alderman and Burgesses of the Borough of Bradford v Pickles was the first to establish that it is not unlawful for a property owner to exercise his or her property rights maliciously and to the detriment of others, or the public interest. Though controversial at the time, today it is often invisible and taken for granted. This book explores why the common law, in contrast to civil law systems, developed in this way.

Parliamentary Democracy provides a comparative study of the parliamentary regimes since 1789. The book covers the road to parliamentarization of former constitutional monarchies and the creation of parliamentary regimes by exercising the constitution-making power of the people. What has been called democratization in most of the 'transitology' literature was until 1918 mostly only 'parliamentarization'. Democratization of the regimes frequently caused a certain destabilization of the parliamentary regimes by new parties and extremist movement entering the political arena. This is the first book to cover the entire range of parliamentary systems, including the semi-presidential systems.

The Boys and Girls Republic of Farmington Hills, Michigan, came to life as the Boys Republic during the Progressive Era, when the combined stresses of urbanization, immigration, and poverty left an unprecedented number of children on the streets. It was a time marked both by social change and new thinking about the welfare of children, especially the neglected, delinquent, or abused. Here Gay Zieger tells the story of the remarkable humanitarians and reformers in the Detroit area who offered such children shelter, food, and comfort. Their efforts ultimately evolved into one of the most dramatic illustrations of a "junior republic" -- an innovation directed not at enforcing discipline from above but rather at cultivating character among children through example and self-government.

We meet, for instance, the colorful first superintendent, Homer T. Lane, who believed in the innate goodness of children and established a self-governing system that allowed the boys in his care to exercise some power over their lives. While Lane dealt with issues concerning personal hygiene and honesty -- and the book includes humorous accounts of how the boys arrived at "laws" addressing these matters -- later issues included aggressive behavior, alienation, and drugs. Telling a story that spans the twentieth century, the author traces the social currents that gave rise to these problems, as well as the changing philosophies and psychological approaches aimed at resolving them. Her book pays tribute to the Republic, a residential treatment center for both boys and girls since 1994, by sharing the stories of individuals determined to help children discover their potential to succeed.

This book seeks to determine the origins of preaching in Christianity, and to trace its history before Origen.
On the basis of a examination of the external evidence for Christian preaching before Origen and of cognate activities in the ancient world which might have influenced Christian practice, and on the basis of a narrative hypothesis on the nature of the development of Christianity, a history is traced by which prophecy gives way to Scripture as the primitive Christian "oikos becomes the "oikos theou. The homily is seen to emerge from the practice of submitting prophecy to judgement and application, which comes to employ Scripture and in time is employed on Scripture itself.
This is the first attempt to answer the questions of how, when and why preaching entered Christian worship.

The Vanderbilt Divinity School is one of only four university-based interdenominational institutions in the United States, and the only one in the South. As such, its history provides a distinct vantage point for viewing what has occurred in theological education since the latter part of the nineteenth century. In this book, the contributors explore the school's history in terms of four main themes:

Engagement with southern culture, present from the beginnings of the university but taking on special significance in the mid-twentieth century around the issue of race;

The transition from an institution of the church (Methodist) to an independent and interdenominational school with a liberal Protestant orientation;

The development of the modern research university, evident in the establishment of a graduate program in religion in addition to its program for the profession of ministry;

From the 1950s, a growing concern with diversity and inclusivity, in keeping with national and international issues and developments both religious and cultural, which has broadened the school's sense of ecumenism and deepened its commitments to social justice.

Conflict has played an important part in shaping the history of the Vanderbilt Divinity School, from struggles over initial visions to questions of financial support and institutional control, from local debates over academic freedom to national issues of social justice. Especially noteworthy are the transformations the school has undergone since 1960: the "James Lawson affair," where the divinity school faculty resigned over the expulsion of an African American graduate student who was organizing local lunch counter sit-ins; the impact of social change on the school since the late 1960s; and the contributions of women and African Americans, including their appointment to the faculty.