Charles Dorn

Bio: Charles Dorn is an academic researcher from Bowdoin College. The author has contributed to research in topics: Democracy & World War II. The author has an hindex of 9, co-authored 21 publications receiving 150 citations.

The Cold War Politicization of Literacy: Communism, UNESCO, and the World Bank

Abstract: In 1947, officials at the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) established an unprecedented, worldwide literacy program. Simultaneously, however, officials at the World Bank refused to support educational programming, arguing that education-related projects could not guarantee a return on Bank investments. In 1962, however, World Bank lending policies began to shift. Lending for primary education increased from zero to 14 percent between 1963 and 1978 and overall Bank spending on education rose dramatically. During this same period, however, critics increasingly questioned the central principles upon which UNESCO officials established their organization's educational programming, fearing that the organization had come under communist influence. This paper reexamines the evolving priorities of United Nations organizations during the Cold War and the increasing politicization of economic development. It offers a critical reassessment of the role of the World Bank and UNESCO in negotiating the ideological conflict between capitalism and communism.

‘The World’s Schoolmaster’: Educational Reconstruction, Grayson Kefauver, and the Founding of UNESCO, 1942–46

Abstract: The United States government sought to foster peaceful and stable democracies in Europe following the Second World War, especially in conquered enemy territories. This essay illuminates the tensions underlying that project by examining an important element of American foreign policy during the war era—the reconstruction of educational systems in war‐torn Axis and Allied nations. American educators during the war years, led by Stanford University School of Education Dean Grayson Kefauver, successfully convinced the US State Department that democratic educational systems in Europe were a prerequisite for postwar international security, an idea that led to the founding of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Conceiving of education as a cooperative enterprise, however, Kefauver and his colleagues encountered a significant dilemma while championing their proposals: how to advance educational reforms in foreign nations, particularly fallen totalitarian states, without...

The Development of Secularism in Turkey

Abstract: Part 1 The glimmerings 1718-1826: silhouette of a renaissance reaction against innovation the new social order and its fall. Part 2 The breakthrough 1826-1878: foundations of a secular state Tanzimat the economic and political impact of the West the secularism of the Tanzimat the constitutional movement constitution of 1876. Part 3 The reaction 1878-1908: constitutional absolutism the reactions against the reaction. Part 4 Search for a fulcrum 1908-19: the Mesrutiyet three proposed roads to reconstruction reforming the institutions the secularism of the Mesrutiyet. Part 5 The struggle for establishment of a secular nation-state 1919-39: the birth of a nation under fire the Kemalist reforms the secularism of the Kemalist regime.

Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown v. Board of Education.

Abstract: Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown v. Board of Education. By Danielle S. Allen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. 254p. $25.00 cloth.It may seem odd, given its title, but this is a book about friendship. The central problem of American democracy, according to Danielle Allen, is a lack of trust among citizens. For democracy to be stable, its citizens must feel confident that the obligations and opportunities of society are shared equitably. Yet majority rule is a breeding ground for distrust, particularly in a polity marked by race. Without trust, there is nothing to bind the minority and the majority together. The task of this book is to find ways for citizens to trust one another in these unsettled times. Doing so, Allen argues, requires developing habits of political friendship. The challenge of democratic politics, ironically, is to turn strangers into friends.

The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age, 1300–1600

Abstract: (1973). The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age, 1300–1600. History: Reviews of New Books: Vol. 1, No. 7, pp. 152-153.

History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey: The First Ottoman Empire, 1280–1413

Abstract: The first century of Ottoman existence was their heroic age. Living largely in the saddle as leaders of the gazis, the founders of the dynasty were no more than commanders of Turkish tribes organized primarily to raid and conquer the infidel territory around them. With the collapse of Byzantine resistance, the Ottomans found it far easier to expand in western Anatolia and across the Dardanelles into Southeastern Europe than to move against their more powerful Muslim and Turkish neighbors. Advancing rapidly through Thrace and Macedonia, the Ottomans took much of Bulgaria, northern Greece, Bosnia, and Serbia as far as the Danube, developing a system of rule by which the native Christian princes retained their positions and lands in return for acknowledging Ottoman suzerainty and providing soldiers and money. The Ottomans were successful at this time because as gazis fighting the infidel they attracted into their service thousands of nomads fleeing into Anatolia from the Mongols. The early Ottoman leaders also were members and sometimes leaders of the urban ahi brotherhoods that were organized so as to bring help and relief to the people when the defenses of the centralized state failed. While there were other Turkoman gazi leaders in Anatolia, the Ottomans were in direct contact with the Byzantines and could best exploit the latter's weakness and thus attract the manpower that enabled them to conquer and rule the Christian lands across the Straits in Europe. The first Ottoman Empire was, then, based on both religious and economic motives. Its followers sought to extend the dominion of Islam and to secure booty.

A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire

Abstract: M. Sukru Hanioglu Princeton and Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2008 ISBN: 978 0 691 13452 9 Compared to the histories of previous centuries, nineteenth century histories of the Ottoman Empire ...