Search results

Leadership in higher education has become of increasing importance as the size of the enterprise has grown, and this has naturally led to a growing research interest in the topic. Using systematic review methods, this chapter interrogates and synthesises the research literature on leadership in higher education in terms of its meanings, application and practice, and the issues and critiques raised. It concludes that research into leadership in higher education has been both extensive and global in nature, identifying a variety of understandings, practices and approaches adopted, and the continuing dominance of white men in senior leadership positions. There is clearly scope for more research on this topic, which could both emphasise different issues and give greater recognition to the particular nature of higher education and higher education institutions.

This paper challenges and expands commonplace assumptions about problems of time and temporality in emergencies. In traditional emergency powers theory “emergency time” is predominantly an “exceptional time.” The problem is that there is “no time” and the solution is limited “in time”: exceptional behavior is allowed for a special time only, until the emergency is over, or according to formal sunset clauses. But what is characteristic of many emergencies is not the problem of “no time” but the ways in which time is legally structured and framed to handle them. Using the Israeli High Court of Justice 1999 decision on the use of physical interrogation methods under conditions of necessity, this paper illustrates how legally significant emergency-time structures that lay beyond the problematic of exceptional time, gravely implicate the way that “exceptional measures” are practiced and regularized.

This study explores the simultaneous transitions in Palestine/Israel and South Africa at the end of the 20th century through an analysis of the shifting geography of Johannesburg and Jerusalem. After analyzing the relationship between political, economic and spatial restructuring, I examine the walled enclosures that mark the landscapes of post-apartheid Johannesburg and post-Oslo Jerusalem. I conclude by arguing that these walled enclosures reveal several interconnected aspects of the relationship between neo-liberal restructuring and the militarization of urban space. They also exemplify different configurations of sovereignty under conditions of neo-liberalism and empire.

This chapter highlights the close relationship between the wellbeing of faculty and students in higher education and the quality of teaching and learning. Improving teaching and learning is crucial for promoting the wellbeing of both faculty and students. As such, instructional leadership, an approach that focuses on enhancing teaching and learning, should be a priority for higher education leaders. However, the involvement of higher education leaders in instructional leadership is often limited. Therefore, a customized version of instructional leadership that considers the unique priorities, characteristics, and norms of this specific educational context should be implemented in higher education to prioritize the improvement of teaching and learning and, consequently, enhance the wellbeing of faculty and students.

Taking an intersectional approach, this chapter makes a theoretical and empirical contribution to the study of mothers’ movements in the context of social welfare cutbacks in Israel. I argue that the political use of the maternal identity provides an important cultural resource to women’s social movements, yet all women cannot access this advantage equally. By adding an intersectional perspective to the literature on women’s movements and media debates, this empirical study shows that the ability of different groups of women to politically mobilize their maternal identity in the news is impacted by their class and racial backgrounds. I focus on Israel as an ambiguous case that reflects both the political relevance of maternal identity as mobilized by different political actors, as well as the intersectional dynamics of marginalization of women’s movements within contentious media debates about austerity policies. Using critical discourse analysis, I analyzed 268 newspaper articles that discuss the Israeli Single Mothers’ Movement, a welfare rights movement of low-income women of color (Mizrahi). I find two competing frames converging across the newspapers analyzed: the first draws on a nationalist discourse of the “mother of the nation” to present a positive image of a heroic “mothers’ movement”; the second draws on racist and sexist images to negatively frame activists as a “Mizrahi movement” of undeserving poor mothers. I show how the contested construction of the Single Mothers’ Movement in the news media is directly connected to hegemonic Israeli discourse on motherhood and ethnicity, and demonstrate how this shapes the movement’s public image and its political and feminist value.

This paper argues that Charles Reznikoff’s autobiography, Family Chronicle: An Odyssey from Russia to America, presents Jewish law as an ethical alternative to U.S. law. The autobiography illustrates how Jewish law refuses to let social and economic hierarchies compromise its emphasis on truth-finding and the speedy resolution of legal troubles. Family Chronicle tragically portrays the Reznikoff family’s inability to exert equal bargaining power with its landlords, something commercial lease law assumes they can do. Reznikoff’s autobiography suggests that the United States can better realize its democratic principles by revising commercial lease law to reflect the tenant-centered approach of residential lease law.

Purpose: The majority of academic and policy studies on counterterrorism rely on what is termed “the terror stock model.” According to this model, terrorist activity can be viewed as a product of a stock of terror: a combination of human, physical, and monetary resources needed to launch terrorist attacks. Consequently, countering terrorism is a matter of reducing the capacity of terrorist organizations to operate via direct assaults on terrorists themselves. Defining terrorism as a form of collective action, this article examines how various Israeli initiatives influence Palestinian acts of terrorism.

Method: This paper investigates how the rate of suicide terror attempts is affected by violent, non-violent, and socioeconomic forms of initiatives by the Israeli government between 2000 and 2006 using a series of event-history analyses. While directly addressing the efficacy of what the Israeli government terms as its methods of counterterrorism – violent repression of insurgents and terror suspects – it also explores the applicability of various social movement theories to exact a more accurate awareness of what activities actually incite or inhibit terrorism.

Findings: The results indicate that while certain forms of repression that the Israeli government identifies as counter-terrorist measures (such as killing of insurgents and detentions) have the intended outcome – a lower rate of suicide bombings – other forms and measures of repression have mixed effects. The results suggest that suicide bombings can be explained at least partly by a mixture of increased hostility, limited capacity to mobilize, and socioeconomic distress.

In this brief essay, I will describe the compatibility of a postmodern turn in sociology and the symbolic interactionist approach to the study of music in everyday life. This compatibility is reflected in the work and career of musical artist Matisyahu, as illustrated by the concept of pastiche. The interaction among the three dimensions of image, music, and religious ideology in Matisyahu’s work operationalizes this concept. The primary resources for this analysis include Matisyahu’s recorded music; an interview conducted with him by The Times of Israel in which he explains his personal transition from the Labuvitch movement to the Modern Orthodox Movement and how this transition affected his music; and my attendance at four of his concerts in Central Texas. Pastiche refers to “a free-floating, crazy quilt, collage, hodgepodge patchwork of ideas or views. It includes elements of opposites such as the old and new. It denies regularity, logic or symmetry; it glories in contradiction and confusion” (Rosenau, 1991, xiii). I conclude with a brief pedagogical argument on how to expand the use of music to explain complex sociological theory and social phenomena. By highlighting theoretical concepts through music, we can ground new and complex ideas in lived experiences and engage students with a topic that is grounded in their daily life experience.