CONTACT
Teachers, Professors, and Other Educators
If you would like to teach CLASH! in your classroom, please email academic@us.penguingroup.com for an educator’s review copy of the book.
Anyone Else with Comments, Questions, or Clashes
Email us here: conner.alana@gmail.com or leave a comment below.
Hello, my name is Yehuda Fogel, and I enjoyed reading your book , it was quite informative. However, there were a few points in relation to Judaism that I think you may have been misinformed about.
On page 142 in the hardcover edition, the sentiment was expressed (roughly paraphrasing) that Jews dont attach moral significance to thoughts. I’m unclear about the authenticity of this, for there are numerous counts of prohibitions and commandments regarding thought, both in early scriptures and by later rabbinic authorities.
Additionally, on page 146, the authors claim that before the 19/20th centuries, there was no conversion option for Jews. This is completely inaccurate, as there are many, many passages in the Torah as well as in later writs that openly discuss and allow conversion to Judaism.
Thank you for your time, as well as for the majority of the work, which remains strong in my eyes.
Yehuda Fogel
I am a Texas high school teacher who has created a Cultural Anthropology class as an elective at our school. As you can image we do not have much of a budget for supplies so I am not able to get a classroom set of your book for my students. I was wondering if I could get permission to make classroom copies of portions of CLASH! to share with my students for student discussion and writing assignments topics. I LOVE the book, I am not yet finished reading it through the first time but can hardly wait to read it again!
Thank you for your time and consideration,
Shana Lyles
Hello,
I am a world cultures teacher at Leland H.S. in San Jose and our school was in one of the Stanford studies mentioned in your book. I am hoping to use your book in my class this year to address the various cultural challenges facing students in our diverse community. We are hoping to purchase a class set for my class ( approx 40 copies). Is there a paperback version? Is there a location to get large quantities other than Amazon or Barnes and Noble, etc?
Have you considered a website where lesson addressing chapters of your book can be gathered, so other teachers like me can both produce them as well as access other teachers work.
The book is great, we are currently going through our WASC process and the chapter regarding Grit and having a growth mind-set are already having an impact on our Vision Andy Mission statements.
Please let me know what I can do to help spread the word within the educational community of your work. I feel your book should be mandatory reading for every high school age kid in America, and I plan on doing my part this school year.
Respectfully,
Scot Gillis
Leland H.S.
San Jose, Ca
Hello Yehuda,
Thank you for your thoughtful comment. Let us respond to the two excellent points you raise.
First, our colleague Adam Cohen, who studies the moral significance of thinking across religions, does not find that thinking has absolutely no moral significance in Judaism. Rather, he finds that Protestants attach far greater moral significance to thoughts than do Jews. And so the difference between Protestants and Jews on this dimension is one of relative emphasis, not of absolute difference.
Second, you are correct: the Torah and other Jewish texts do discuss conversion. What we meant to communicate is that conversion to Judaism did not become a widespread practice until the 19th and 20th centuries. We will try to clarify this point in the next edition of CLASH!
Thank you for your close reading of our book and for sharing your insights!
All best,
Hazel and Alana
I’ve been enjoying reading CLASH! and have been stimulated to think about many things in the book, in my efforts to understand cultural differences, especially effecting the U.S. electoral system and other seemingly intractable clashes in places like India and the Middle East.
However, I was shocked to see an inaccuracy on page 229, where it says “In the United States, for instance, Interracial marriage was illegal until 1967.” A footnote references Loving v. Virginia, but it doesn’t explain that the decision refers to the State of Virginia. I, an Irish-American, married a dark-skinned person from India, considered by some to be of a different race, in 1967 in western, non-urban Illinois. Even back then, I knew interracial couples who were married, and nobody told any of us that it was illegal anywhere outside a few southern states. I’ll have to admit, when I started reading the book, I was a little suspicious about the obvious youth of the authors. You don’t have the historical perspective, but surely you would have had editors or other pre-publication readers; or maybe they were all under 50.
Please pardon our long delay in responding. You are correct; our wording did not accurately convey the result of Loving v. Virginia, which was the Supreme Court ruling that made it illegal for states to criminalize interracial marriages. Prior to the ruling, many states had already legalized interracial marriage. But quite a few states (including Virginia) still enforced their anti-miscegenation laws, and the Supreme Court in several decisions had upheld states’ rights to do so. It wasn’t until Loving v. Virginia, though, that the U.S. Supreme Court made acceptance of interracial marriages the law of the land, with no exception.
Thank you for the keen read. We will clarify our language in the next edition!
Hello,
i’m a student on a danish international school, and i have oral exams, where i choose to work with culture clashes. I decided to study on, how the US affect the world. I have tried to google it, but all i get is how their finance affect the world. I know it’s a topic with a lot of answers i can answer my self, but i need some sources. Does the US affect the world the most, with all their music, movies (in general the american culture). Where do you think the american culture will bring us? and how do you think it affect the world? (in a good or bad way)
Thanks for the time and consideration.
Thanks, I’m happy to be reminded of your book. That inaccuracy was striking to me because in my personal life, I have only lived in Illinois (a mile from Iowa), and Wisconsin for college, and had no direct awareness of those miscegenation laws. In graduate school in Chicago in 1963-5, the segregated south was like a foreign land, as the song reverberated in my mind: “Here’s to the land you’ve torn out the heart of, Mississippi find yourself another country to be part of.”
I very much enjoyed the book. I’m a clinician and writer and specialize in gender medicine and men’s health and particularly liked the chapter on gender cultures. I’d like to know if you have written in more depth about the two styles of selves and the five difference.
Independent Interdependent
Individual Relational
Unique Similar
Influencing Adjusting
Free Rooted
Equal (yet great!) Ranked
There also seems a lot of relevance to our divided and clashing political parties.