Jump to content

Jack Nusan Porter

Add links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jack Nusan Porter
Born
Nusia Jakub Puchtik

1944 (age 80–81)
Rovno, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union (now Ukraine)
Died
Born: Dec. 2, 1944 Citizenship:USA
Occupation(s)Writer, sociologist, genocide and Holocaust scholar; human rights and social activist

Spouses: Miriam Almuly (1977-2001) 

             Rona Vogel (October 24, 2007--Nov. 3, 2007)
             Raya Evashko Porter (2011-2017)

  Children    Gabriel (Gabe) Alexander Porter
              Danielle Almuly Kadish
              Sveta Kogut (step daughter from Raya Porter)

Parents Irving Porter (Srulik Puchtik) 1906-1979 

              Faye Merin Porter (Faygeh Puchtik) 1909-2009

Relatives Rabbi Shlomo (Sol) Porter, brother (1947--) 

               Bella Porter Smith, sister  (1954-2020
               Yehuda Merin (Israeli editor and leader in Holocaust survivor groups/Yad Volyn)
               Allen Porter (1926-2020)  Chicago and Los Angeles designer and photographer of the Bauhaus movement
               Marlon Porter (Allen's son), Australian Rap artist

Jack Nusan Porter (born Nusia Jakub Puchtik, 1944) is an American writer, sociologist, human rights activist, and former treasurer and vice-president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars. He is a former assistant professor of social science at Boston University and a former research associate at Harvard's Ukrainian Research Institute. Currently, he is a research associate at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University, where he conducts research on Israeli-Russian relations. Some of his research topics include the life of Golda Meir, the application of mathematical and statistical models to predict genocide and terrorism, and modes of resistance to genocide.

Early life and education

[edit]

Nusia Jakub Puchtik was born December 2, 1944, in Rovno, Ukraine to Jewish-Ukrainian partisan parents Faljga Merin and Srulik Puchtik. The family emigrated to the United States on June 20, 1946, and their name was Anglicized to Porter.[1]

He grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and attended Washington High School. He moved to Israel and studied at the Machon L'Madrichei Chutz La'Aretz. Porter attended the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee from 1963 to 1967, majoring in sociology and Hebrew Studies. In 1967, he began a PhD in sociology at Northwestern University.

Career

[edit]

In 1976, Porter founded the Journal of the History of Sociology; it published its first issue in 1978.[2]

In the spring of 2012, Porter ran for United States Representative as a write-in candidate in Massachusetts' Fourth District following the departure of incumbent Representative Barney Frank. Running as a Democrat, Porter described himself as a "radical-libertarian-progressive" and aligned his views with those of Representative Ron Paul and Senator Bernie Sanders.[3] Porter's write-in candidacy gained less than 0.1% of the vote; Joseph Kennedy III won the primary with approximately 90% of the vote and was later elected to his first term in Congress in the 2012 general election.[4]

Rabbi: Temple Emanuel, Marlboro, Mass. 2000, non-denominational congregation 

       Temple Emmanuel, Chelsea, Mass. 2001, reform and conservative congregation
       Congregation B'nai Zion, Key West, Florida, 2001, conservative congregation

Singer: Influenced by Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach; Reb Michel Twerski; brother Reb Shlomo Porter; father Irving Porter; nephew Rabbi Aryeh Smith; The Feenjon Group; 1950s Israeli singers Ron and Nama, The Dudaim and Hillel and Aviva; plus Mizrachi singer Eyal Golan.

Other influences: Rockabilly (Johnny Burnette, Johnny Rivers, Conway Twitty, Everly Brothers, Elvis, and Terry Lee and the Rockaboogie Band)

Styles of Singing: Hasidic, Israeli, Mizrachi, Sephardic, Yiddish and Rockabilly


Popular Culture:

  • There's a character called "Jack Porter" in the ABC TV show "Revenge", portrayed by actor Nick Wechsler.
  • A character, a college professor, in a short story by Jewish novelist and short--story writer David Leavitt in his book "The Stories of David Leavitt" is based on Jack Nusan Porter's life in the small college town of Cortland in upstate New York.
  • Porter helped the Indigo Girls with the words to their song "This Train Revised" about the persecution of the "The 175ers", the "pink triangles", the gays and lesbians during the Holocaust. His nephew Michael Lorant (from his marriage to Miriam Almuly) and his wife played with the Indigo Girls in Atlanta, GA. and connected Porter to them and through a discussion about the 'Pink Triangles", Porter educated the singers---Amy Ray and Emily Saliers--- about the Holocaust for their 1994 album "Swamp Ophelia"

Update on Research: Sociology and National Socialism: the lives of Edward Yarnall Hartshorne and Talcott Parsons of Harvard University in the 1940s; the history of Holocaust studies at Harvard University since the 1930s to the present.


Selected works

[edit]

Porter's books include:

  • Student Protest and the Technocratic Society: The Case of ROTC (Chicago: Adams Press, 1973 and based on his sociology Ph.D. dissertation from Northwestern University, June 1971)[5]
  • Jewish Radicalism (Grove Press, 1973; with Peter Dreier)[6]
  • The Sociology of American Jews (University Press of America, 1978, 1980)[7]
  • The Jew as Outsider (University Press of America, 1981; The Spencer Press, 2014)[8][9]
  • Jewish Partisans: A Documentary of Jewish Resistance in the Soviet Union During World War II (University Press of America, 1982; The Spencer Press, 2013)[10]
  • Conflict and Conflict Resolution: An Historical Bibliography (Garland Publishing, 1982)[11]
  • Genocide and Human Rights: A Global Anthology (University Press of America, 1982)[12]
  • Confronting History and Holocaust (University Press of America, 1983; new edition with bibliography of Porter's works, The Spencer Press, 2014)[8]
  • Sexual Politics in the Third Reich: The Persecution of the Homosexuals During the Holocaust (The Spencer Press, 1991, with Rudiger Lautmann and Erhard Vismar; 20th Anniversary edition, The Spencer Press, 2011)[13]
  • The Sociology of Genocide: A Curriculum Guide (American Sociological Association, 1992)[13]
  • The Sociology of Jewry: A Curriculum Guide (American Sociological Association, 1992)[13]
  • Women in Chains: On the Agunah (Jason Aronson, 1995)[14]
  • The Genocidal Mind: Sociological and Sexual Perspectives (University Press of America, 2006)[15]
  • Is Sociology Dead? Social Theory and Social Praxis in a Post-Modern Age (University Press of America, 2008)[16]
  • Sexual Politics in Nazi Germany: The Persecution of the Homosexuals and Lesbians During the Holocaust (The Spencer Press, 2011, 2023)
  • The Radical Writings of Jack Nusan Porter (Academic Studies Press, 2020)
  • Jewish Partisans of the Soviet Union During World War II (in Russian and English, Academic Studies Press, 2022)
  • Can Mathematical Models Predict Genocide? (The Spencer Press, 2022)
  • Can Mathematical Models Predict Terrorist Acts? (Academic Studies Press, 2022; with Trevor Jones)
  • The Wit and Wisdom of Erich Goldhagen on Hitler, Nazism, the Holocaust and Other Genocides (The Spencer Press, 2023)
  • If Only You Could Bottle It: Memoirs of a Radical Son (Academic Studies Press, 2023)
  • L'Matara (For the Purpose): Jewish Partisan Poetry and Prose from the DP Camps of Europe (Academic Studies Press, 2023)

New publications: *

  • Western Civilization: A New Paradigm; 20 epochs according to their social sgteructure and social pideology and philosophy;
  • new textbooks: What is Culture? What is Sociology? What is Genocide? and What is Antisemitism: From Deicide to Genocide and Beyond;
  • Since Solomon and Sheba: Black-Jewish Relations Since Biblical Times
  • The Wit and Wisdom of Harold Brow: How to Succeed in Business and in Life by One of the Most successful Real Estate entrepreneurs in the History of Boston
  • The Wit and Wisdom of Erich Goldhagen on Nazism, Hitler, the Holocaust and other Genocides; Lecturer at Harvard University
  • The History of Ben Porter and the Porter-Barg Families of Milford, Mass.
  • The Scrap Metal Dealers of Milwaukee: From Peddling to Recycling

Humor, Hollywood and Food: New Books:

  • How to be a Rabbi in 12 Easy Lessons
  • 21 Screen Treatments for Hollywood (including "Key West Rabbi", "Partisans", and Bios of Cultural Rebels like James Dean, C. Wright Mills, and Ty Cobb)
  • Milwaukee and Hollywood (on Gene Wilder, Jim Abraham and the Zucker Brothers)
  • Small Town Secrets
  • Happy Days Revisited (with Gerry Glazer and Sandy Aronin)

Ukrainian--Jewish Cooking (with Raya Porter) The Sexual Adventures of a Jewish Sociologist (under the pseudonym--Marc Wennerstrom)


Awards

[edit]
  • 2004: Lifetime Achievement Award, American Sociological Association Section on the History of Sociology for his founding of the Journal of the History of Sociology, 1977-1982. He shared the award with Glenn Jacobs and Alan Sica.[17]
  • 2009: The Robin Williams Award for Distinguished Contributions to Scholarship, Teaching, and Service from the American Sociological Association, Section on Peace, War, and Social Conflict (for his work in genocide and Holocaust studies).[18]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ "Porter, Jack Nusan | Archival and Manuscript Collections". findingaids.library.northwestern.edu. Retrieved 2024-05-17.
  2. ^ Lewis, J. David (March 1980). "Review of The Journal of the History of Sociology, Volume 1, Number 1, Fall 1978". Contemporary Sociology. 9 (2): 263–264. doi:10.2307/2066046. JSTOR 2066046.; Porter, Jack Nusan (Fall 2004). "The Journal of the History of Sociology: Its Origins and Scope". The American Sociologist. 35 (3): 52–63. doi:10.1007/s12108-004-1017-2. JSTOR 27700395. S2CID 143925482.
  3. ^ McGrath, Ben (April 9, 2012). "The Campaign Trail: Write-In". The New Yorker. Retrieved November 13, 2019.
  4. ^ "Massachusetts Election Statistics". Massachusetts SOS. 2012-11-05. Retrieved 2019-12-05.
  5. ^ O'Neill, William L. (June 1974). "Review of Student Protest and the Technocratic Society". The American Historical Review. 79 (3): 911–912. doi:10.2307/1868089. JSTOR 1868089.
  6. ^ Winter, J. Alan (September 1974). "Review of Jewish Radicalism". Contemporary Sociology. 3 (5): 441–442. doi:10.2307/2062009. JSTOR 2062009. Gerstein, Arnold A. (September 1974). "Review of Jewish Radicalism". American Jewish Historical Quarterly. 64 (1): 79–81. JSTOR 23880260.
  7. ^ Verbit, Mervin F. (January 1980). "Review of The Sociology of American Jews". Contemporary Sociology. 9 (1): 119–120. doi:10.2307/2065627. JSTOR 2065627. Sarna, Jonathan D. (May 1983). "The essence of American Judaism". Modern Judaism. 3 (2): 237–241. doi:10.1093/mj/3.2.237. JSTOR 1396083.
  8. ^ a b Martindale, Don (April–June 1985). "Review of Confronting history and Holocaust and The Jew as Outsider". International Journal on World Peace. 2 (2): 101–118. JSTOR 20750921.
  9. ^ Laforse, Martin (1984). "Review of The Jew as Outsider". Nationalities Papers. 12 (2): 303–305. doi:10.1017/s0090599200033985. S2CID 189379441.
  10. ^ Laforse, Martin (1984). "Review of Jewish Partisans". Nationalities Papers. 12 (2): 301–303. doi:10.1017/s0090599200033973. S2CID 165414450.
  11. ^ Leuner, P. S. (December 1988). "Review of Conflict and Conflict Resolution". The British Journal of Sociology. 39 (4): 640–641. doi:10.2307/590520. JSTOR 590520.
  12. ^ Smith, Earl (July 1985). "Review of Genocide and Human Rights". Contemporary Sociology. 14 (4): 508–509. doi:10.2307/2069221. JSTOR 2069221. Leuteritz, Karl (1985). "Review of Genocide and Human Rights". Verfassung und Recht in Übersee / Law and Politics in Africa, Asia and Latin America. 18 (1): 67–70. JSTOR 43109412.
  13. ^ a b c Poll, Carol (April 1995). "Review of The Sociology of Jewry, The Sociology of Genocide, and Sexual Politics in the Third Reich". Teaching Sociology. 23 (2, Teaching about Inequality and Diversity: Age, Class, Gender, and Race/Ethnicity): 186–189. doi:10.2307/1319357. JSTOR 1319357.
  14. ^ Chrisler, Joan C. (January 1996). "Review of Women in Chains". Contemporary Jewry. 17 (1): 181–182. JSTOR 23451118. Jackson, Bernard S. (2002). "A Jewish law miscellany". Journal of Law and Religion. 17 (1/2): 235–245. doi:10.2307/1051426. JSTOR 1051426. S2CID 232344590.
  15. ^ Worrell, Mark P. (July 2008). "Review of The Genocidal Mind". Contemporary Sociology. 37 (4): 356–357. doi:10.1177/009430610803700435. JSTOR 20444229. S2CID 143464210.
  16. ^ Mishra, Aditya K. (March 2009). "Review of Is Sociology Dead?". Contemporary Sociology. 38 (2): 196–197. doi:10.1177/009430610903800254. JSTOR 20617242. S2CID 148699632.
  17. ^ "American Sociological Association, History of Sociology, Lifetime Achievement Award". American Sociological Association. 14 April 2014. Retrieved November 12, 2019.
  18. ^ "American Sociological Association, Section on Peace, War and Social Conflict, Robin Williams Award for Distinguished Contributions to Scholarship, Teaching, and Service". American Sociological Association. 3 October 2011. Retrieved November 12, 2019.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jack_Nusan_Porter&oldid=1272097887"