No abstract
With the last Holocaust survivors quietly passing away, one might also expect to see accountability debates slowing to a trickle. Surprisingly, however, recent years show an upswing in corporate World War II-related atonement debates. Interest in corporate participation in mass atrocity has expanded worldwide; yet what constitutes ethical corporate behavior during and after war remains understudied. This article considers these questions through a study of the French National Railways' (SNCF) roles during the German occupation and its more recent struggle to make amends. This study demonstrates that ethical business leadership requires taking responsibility for past as well as current decisions. Most executives grappling with complex corporate histories work in isolation, in part because the scholarship on business ethics fails to provide guidance. Without such guidance, corporations often respond to accusations about their pasts with carefully crafted statements and legal strategies rather than deep expressions of moral leadership. To assist in remedying this tendency, this paper simultaneously encourages companies to engage in deeper reflection on corporate history, while urging scholars to help guide corporations through critical ethical conversations.
Mass atrocity requires the participation of numerous individuals and groups, yet only a few find themselves held accountable. How are these few selected? This article offers a framework that is useful for understanding how the condemned often embody attributes that keep them in the spotlight. Because norms used to identify perpetrators can set the context for future violence, long-term security requires interrupting both the actions of perpetrators and the discourses about them. A form of praxis, this study of the contemporary conflict over the French National Railways’ (SNCF) amends-making for its World War II transport of deportees towards death camps considers how certain perpetrators come to stand for the many. The SNCF remains in the spotlight not because of greater culpability or an unwillingness to make amends but because it embodies attributes of an ‘ideal’ perpetrator: it is (1) strong, (2) abstractable, (3) representative of the nature of the crime, and (4) has a champion-opponent who focuses attention on the perpetrator. Understanding the labeling process makes visible who and what we ignore at our own peril.
This article provides an overview of how research at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is oriented to meet the current ecological and environmental challenges facing agricultural systems through strategic planning, as coordinated by the Office of the Chief Scientist (OCS). Strategic planning is a rigorous process across the USDA's agencies and offices, often requiring input from multiple stakeholders and multiple sectors. A subset of those agencies engages in, and supports, research. The OCS supports the USDA's Chief Scientist by coordinating high-level strategic science planning across the Department on both annual and five-year cycles (REE, 2012). OCS strategic science plans are reviewed and updated annually, and completely reformulated every 5 years. To develop these plans, senior advisors to the Chief Scientist work in tandem with partner agencies, such as the Forest Service (https ://www.fs.fed.us/), and experts from across the Department. These strategic plans play a major role in setting the tone and prioritization for research by first, making ongoing research visible and accessible to Department leadership for informed decision-making; and second, by making research and priorities accessible to stakeholders, which also ensures visibility. These strategic planning cycles incorporate in-house programmatic and academic review, as well as active stakeholder engagement, including surveys, public listening sessions and USDAsponsored meetings to identify research and development needs and opportunities. Research initiatives are developed with an aim to both maintain and enhance productivity, while ensuring responsible stewardship of resilient natural resources. The high-level strategic plan developed by the OCS sets the tone for science across the Department and is aligned to USDA-wide strategic goals. Individual agencies and offices additionally engage in more detailed strategic planning to implement research efforts. We do not describe those individual processes here, instead, we highlight examples of research at two USDA agencies: Research, Education, and Economics (REE, https ://www.ree.usda.gov/), and the Forest Service to illustrate how the Department orients scientific efforts to meet future challenges. We consider this specifically in relation to two of the seven major strategic goals of the Department: fostering productive and sustainable use of the U.S.'s national forest system lands; and employing
Scholars who spend extensive time in post-atrocity contexts increasingly articulate the messiness they see or experience. They meet people who both saved lives and took lives, maybe in retaliation. The acts do not add up to a singular identity of good or evil. Former child soldiers, taken and drugged and taught to kill before they could develop a moral compass of their own, provide an example of such complex characters. Elderly people searching their memories may recall in detail "good" and "bad" people on both sides of an atrocity. One of my interviewees, Daniel, for example, attributed his survival at Auschwitz to the kindness of a guard who moved him to kitchen work because his twelve-year-old body could not bear the manual labor. The access to soup and exemption from labor saved his life.For outsiders, the cognitive dissonance one experiences hearing these stories may feel uncomfortable at first. They did not experience violence and suffering firsthand. So, it may be difficult for them to accept, for example, that a few Nazis helped Jews or that some Hutuswho did and did not participate in the Rwandan genocideexperienced torture. A colleague of ours, a Hutu, found himself thrown in a pit and covered in gasoline during the genocide. He was fourteen and not a participant in the killing. Spared the flame, he still bore the scars of war. Even while living in the United States, he received death threats when he shared his story. His fears were not unfounded. There is no room, many felt, for the pain of Hutus after the Tutsis had suffered so greatly.As outsiders, perhaps we are at first afraid of this messiness, afraid that we too might be seduced by stories that rid us of moral certainty. Many of us came to work in the field of mass atrocity for the certainty and security it seemed to provide. While much of the world seemed ambiguous or apathetic, we land comfortably against genocide. What happens to
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.