Yorktown University Newsletter
January 7, 2009
                               
Yorktown University Wins Best Graphic Award for a Campus Newspaper

Yorktown University’s campus newspaper, the Yorktown Patriot, has been recognized as 7th best graphics for a campus newspaper by 10,000words.net.

The award notification reads:  Today, the best designed student newspaper websites are highlighted. It's worth noting the remarkable number of schools relying on the templates provided by College Publisher. It's still up in the air whether this is a good or bad thing, but there is something to be said about individuality and creativity. Good design isn't expensive, it just takes some effort and ingenuity. Hundreds of online newspapers were examined and whittled down to the top seven. Here are the sites that are pushing the design envelope:

Nos. 6-1 awardees were Stanford, Yale, University of Florida, University of Kansas, Dartmouth and Marquette.

Yorktown University’s weekly Webcasts!

In September Yorktown University discovered BlogTalkRadio and now we hold weekly discussions with Yorktown University Faculty that may be accessed at www.blogtalkradio.com, http://dontquitu.com and www.iTunes.com.

Every Wednesday (with some exceptions) we Webcast a discussion from Yorktown University’s Faculty lounge.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009 Webcast

This week’s discussion about public administration features Dr. Michael Sanera.
Dr. Sanera teaches Govt4300, Public Administration, in Yorktown University’s M.A. in Government degree program.

The importance of this course is evident in President-Elect Barack Obama’s nomination of Leon Panetta to head the Central Intelligence Agency.  Two government agencies are impervious to the outcome of presidential elections—the Department of State and the Central Intelligence Agency.  Successful Directors of Central Intelligence allow themselves to be co-opted by CIA professionals.  Those who resist are subjected to a campaign that usually leads to their resignations.  Politcally savvy Leon Panetta is a potential threat to the CIA thus you can expect Senate confirmation hearings to be testy.

Dr. Sanera understands all that.   In the early 1980s, Dr. Sanera served as a political appointee in the Reagan administration.  He was the Assistant Director for Policy and Evaluation at the Office of Personnel Management, the "personnel office" for three million federal civilian workers.  In this position he evaluated all proposed changes in federal personnel policy including examinations, hiring, retirement, pay, health care, and discipline.  In addition, he served as a consultant at the U.S. Department of Education reviewing the department's grant programs.  His recommendations for tightening controls saved federal taxpayers millions of dollars.

In the mid 1980s, Dr. Sanera developed and implemented the Executive Development Program for The Heritage Foundation.  This program conducted educational seminars designed to increase the policy-making effectiveness of senior political managers in the Reagan Administration.
Dr. Sanera contributed chapters on managing the federal bureaucracy in the Heritage Foundation's Mandate for Leadership II.  Portions of those chapters will be required reading in Dr. Sanera's Public Administration course at Yorktown University.

Govt4300, Public Administration, was designed for public executives and political appointees and those who aspire to become public executives or political appointess.

Founding Faculty William Allen’s New Publication!

On January 16 Yorktown University Founding Faculty member William B. Allen publishes Rethinking Uncle Tom: The Political Philosophy of Harriet Beecher Stowe

His publisher writes: “Generally critics and interpreters of Uncle Tom have constructed a one-way view of Uncle Tom, albeit offering a few kind words for Uncle Tom along the way. Recovering Uncle Tom requires retelling his story. This book delivers on that mission, while accomplishing something no other work on Harriet Beecher Stowe has fully attempted an in-depth statement of her political thought. Her oeuvre, in partnership of that of her husband Calvin, constitutes a demonstration of the permanent necessity of moral and prudential judgment in human affairs. Moreover, it identifies the political conditions that can best guarantee conditions of decency. Her two disciplines­ philosophy and poetry­illuminate the founding principles of the American republic and remedies defects in their realization that were evident in mid-nineteenth century. While slavery is not the only defect, its persistence and expansion indicate the overall defects. In four of her chief works (Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands<I>, Dred, and Oldtown Folks), Stowe teaches not only how to eliminate the defect of slaver, but also how to realize and maintain a regime founded on the basis of natural rights and Christianity. Further, she identifies the proper vehicle for educating citizens so they might reliably be ruled by decent public opinion.
 
The first part of Rethinking Uncle Tom explains Uncle Tom’s Cabin within the context of the Stowe’s joint project, an articulation of the conditions of democratic life and the appropriate nature of modern humanism. Part two analyses how key elements of Calvin’s thinking were conveyed by Stowe’s works, while distinguishing her thought from his, and examines the importance of her “political geography” and the breadth of her thinking on cultural, moral, and political matters. Parts three and four investigate the most mature elements of Stowe’s political thought, providing a close reading of Sunny Memories
­revealing the full political purpose of that work, discerned through mastery of its complex symbolism­and of Oldtown Folks, which completes the development of Stowe’s political thought by assessing three alternative regimes and a vision of anutopia: the ultimate life of decency and order which is proof against false dreams of rationalized life.
 
Rethinking Uncle Tom provides readers not only better familiarity with the moral discourse of abolition and nineteenth-century reformism, but, more importantly, a glimpse of an America envisioned as producing that nobility of soul that Uncle Tom represented, the human model of surpassing excellence.”