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the Center for the Study of the United States | CSUS

in Partnership with the
Fulbright Program

 Tel Aviv University

"BRINGING THE UNITED STATES TO ISRAEL"

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Second Semester Events

  • The Iraq War: 20 Years Later | 23.03.22

  • Erasing Slavery from the Constitution | Guest Lecture by Prof. Ariela Gross (USC Gould School of Law) |21.05.23 

  • Dr. Dan Orbach (Hebrew University) & Atalia Shragai (Kibbutzim College) | CSUS Book Forum (online) | 06.06.23

  • Technology & Democracy | CSUS Annual Conference | 13.06.23

From the Archives

CSUS Publishing Grants
Winners

Clareta Treger | Law & Political Science 

School of Political Science, Government and International Affairs, TAU

Abstract

What shapes Americans’ policy preferences: partisanship or policy content? While previous studies have addressed this question, many of them focused on high-salience policies. This raises an identification challenge because the content of such policies contains party cues. The current study employs a diverse set of low-salience policies to discern the unique effects of party cues and policy content, before the issues are “hijacked” by the parties. These policies are embedded in an original conjoint experiment administered among a national US sample. The design enables me to assess the effects of policy content and partisan sponsorship orthogonally. Contrary to previous studies, I find that respondents are attentive to policy content on low-salience issues, and it influences their policy preferences similarly or even more than party cues, across policy domains. Moreover, the support patterns and levels of Democrats and Republicans for many low-salience policies are similar. Party cues, by contrast, polarize partisans’ preferences across domains.

Yossi Edri | Humanities

The Zvi Yavetz School of Historical Studies, TAU

To Regain Black Dignity: Sports, Politics and Protest in the Mexico City Olympic Boycott Campaign*

Abstract

In October of 1967, a group of top African-American student-athletes from San Jose State University, along with their sociology Professor, Harry Edwards, established the “Olympic Project for Human Rights” (OPHR(, a movement that aspired to use the sporting arena to protest racial injustices and the mistreatment of African Americans in the United States, while promoting social change. Tracing the movement’s year-long campaign to orchestrate an African American boycott of the upcoming 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City, this article examines the movement’s primary attempt to galvanize African American student-athletes into a cohesive collective working together to create social change thru sports, the different strategies it used to execute its plans, and the fierce public backlash it faced during its year-long existence. Eventually failing to execute its boycott plan, the OPHR is mostly remembered by the powerful image of two of its members, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, raising their fists in the air while on the winners’ podium as the national anthem played during the Mexico City Olympics. Although a powerful demonstration of racial pride, the “black power salute” and its fallout represent a transition from a centralized, collective form of action before the Olympics, to an individualistic, symbolic form of protest during it. It easily diverted public attention away from the OPHR’s goal to highlight the plight of African Americans, towards a futile discussion over Smith and Carlos’ explosion from the games. Furthermore, the popular historical narrative which overstatesthe protest’s historical importance, vastly ignores its damaging effects that led to the OPHR’s quick demise right after the Olympics, leaving activism out of the sporting arena for decades, while maintaining the existing power structure in American sports intact.

* The article has yet to be published 

* The full article will be published in Hebrew

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Dr. Chen Edelsburg