Access America

Pop­u­lar Cul­ture, His­to­ry, and Cur­rent Events

“My Goal Would Be To Go Out of Business and Go Back to the Classroom”: An Interview with Nancy Dome

By Sabrina Völz

At the din­ner table, on the train, or at work, we wit­ness dis­crim­i­na­to­ry lan­guage or racist remarks from time to time. We often know that we should say some­thing, but we – for one rea­son or anoth­er – do not always get involved. Many peo­ple would like to do more but don’t always know how. Dr. Nan­cy Dome, who has worked with chil­dren and edu­ca­tors for over 20 years, has lit­er­al­ly made that quandary both her busi­ness and mis­sion. This week’s blog fea­tures an inter­view with the CEO of Epoch Edu­ca­tion about fos­ter­ing the under­stand­ing of diver­si­ty and the devel­op­ment of inclu­sive cultures.

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The Ultimate Election Forecast: More than 5,000 Pollsters Agree – The Next President of the U.S. is ….

By Joannis Kaliampos

The 2020 U.S. elec­tion has peo­ple around the world on the edge of their seats, won­der­ing who will become the next Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States. The two can­di­dates – for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden and the incum­bent Pres­i­dent, Don­ald Trump – would become the old­est men to ever have held this office. Anoth­er ‘first’ is Biden’s VP pick, Kamala Har­ris, junior sen­a­tor from Cal­i­for­nia, the first-ever woman of col­or run­ning on a pres­i­den­tial tick­et. In addi­tion, a glob­al pan­dem­ic, an eco­nom­ic cri­sis, and nation­wide demon­stra­tions protest­ing sys­temic racism make this elec­tion more excit­ing than ever.

Pho­to cred­it: U.S. Embassy Berlin. Stu­dents par­tic­i­pate in a Q and A ses­sion with U.S. elec­tion experts at the con­clud­ing event of the 2016 elec­tion project at the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Berlin.

While U.S. poll­sters, such as Lar­ry Saba­to or Nate Sil­ver, pre­dict a like­ly vic­to­ry for Demo­c­rat Biden, Trump’s 2016 sur­prise upset lead many poll­ster to ask how reli­able elec­tion polls real­ly are. And some­times, the best poll­sters are not those fea­tured in the news, but are those found in high school classrooms.

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A New Millennium?

By Michael Lederer

“MCU035” by maxxtraf­fic is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Jan­u­ary 1, 2000. Not just a new cen­tu­ry, but a new mil­len­ni­um. Spot­less, for the briefest moment, though far from emp­ty. Arriv­ing so brim­ful of promise and hope. “What will it be like?” we won­dered, star­ing almost child-like at the clock as it approached the new era. A brand-new, unopened, ready-to-use mil­len­ni­um! And this time, with all we’d learned over past mil­len­nia, we would get things right.

Knock on wood.

 

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Politics and Religion in a Secular State

By Bobbie Kirkhart

It is iron­ic that, as the world’s first sec­u­lar democ­ra­cy hav­ing scorned all state reli­gion, we soon became and have remained, social­ly and polit­i­cal­ly, pre­oc­cu­pied with god. Cam­paign speech­es end with “God bless you.” The song, “God Bless Amer­i­ca,” which Irv­ing Berlin wrote as a par­o­dy sung by a com­i­cal­ly chau­vin­is­tic char­ac­ter, is now per­formed as a patri­ot­ic hymn.

“God Bless Amer­i­ca” by Joelk75 is licensed under CC BY 2.0

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In a trying political climate, look not towards what divides, but what unites Germany and the U.S.: Journalistic Excellence

By Mattheus Wee

Are Ger­man-Amer­i­can rela­tions in a crit­i­cal state? If pub­lic opin­ion sur­veys are any­thing to go by, per­haps so – at least accord­ing to Ger­mans. While Amer­i­cans gen­er­al­ly still hold on to a pos­i­tive image of Ger­many, the same can­not be said for the way most Ger­mans view the Unit­ed States. A joint­ly con­duct­ed poll by the Pew Research Cen­ter and the Kör­ber-Stiftung revealed late last year that while “three-quar­ters of Amer­i­cans see rela­tions with Ger­many as good,” near­ly “two-thirds of Ger­mans (64%) see rela­tions as bad.” More alarm­ing­ly, the New York Mag­a­zine quotes a sur­vey con­duct­ed by YouGov reveal­ing that Ger­mans view Pres­i­dent Trump as “a greater threat to world peace than any oth­er head of state” – a note­wor­thy dis­tinc­tion, espe­cial­ly in light of the exis­tence of oth­er con­tro­ver­sial lead­ers, such as the likes of Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin.

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