A great man is one who collects knowledge the way a bee collects honey and uses it to help people overcome the difficulties they endure - hunger, ignorance and disease!
- Nikola Tesla

Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.
- Franklin Roosevelt

While their territory has been devastated and their homes despoiled, the spirit of the Serbian people has not been broken.
- Woodrow Wilson

Bogdan Denitch

Bogdan Denitch (born August 9, 1929) is an American sociologist of Yugoslav origin who is an emeritus professor at the City University of New York (CUNY). He is a leading authority on the political sociology of the former Yugoslavia. Active in democratic left politics, Denitch is an honorary chairman of the Democratic Socialists of America, and has served as its representative to the Socialist International. From 1983 through 2004 he organized the annual Socialist Scholars Conference in New York. Since the 1990s he has been an advocate for human rights and an opponent of nationalism in the former Yugoslavia.

Born Bogdan Denis Denič, in Sofia, Bulgaria, he is the son of a Yugoslav diplomat. His parents were of Serbian background. His father was forced into exile by the Nazis and then by Marshal Josip Broz Tito’s communist regime after World War II. He emigrated with his family to the United States in 1946. He enrolled in CUNY (then City College) in 1947, and at age 18 joined the Young People’s Socialist League (YPSL), then the youth affiliate of the Socialist Party of America, led by Norman Thomas. He helped lead that organization into a merger with the Socialist Youth League to form the Young Socialist League in 1954. He learned machinist skills at Metal Trades High School at night while studying at City College, worked as a journeyman machinist and tool and die maker for 13 years, and was an activist in the International Association of Machinists. His machinist union card gave him mobility, and he moved to the San Francisco Bay area in 1958. He was a member of the San Francisco Central Labor Council, and was active in the NAACP and CORE from 1948 to 1964.

In 1964 Denitch moved to Yugoslavia for five years, where he did field research for several sociological projects on unions and on students for Seymour Martin Lipset of the University of California at Berkeley. In 1968 Denitch secured a major research position for a study of elites in Yugoslavia, through the Bureau of Applied Social Research at Columbia University. He moved back to New York in 1969 to complete work on an MA in sociology at Columbia, awarded in 1970 (the university waived its requirement of a BA degree, which Denitch had never completed). He received a doctorat d'université from University of Paris in 1972 for research on the new working class with Serge Mallet and Lucien Goldman. He completed his PhD in sociology in 1973 at Columbia with his dissertation on Yugoslavian elites. He taught at Yale University in 1972, and moved in 1973 to Queens College of CUNY, where he remained until his retirement in 1994. He was executive officer of the PhD Program in Sociology at CUNY Graduate School from 1976 through 1988. He also taught during sabbatical leaves at Birbeck College, University of London in 1979, at the University of Paris in Saint Denis in 1982, at Johns Hopkins University in Bologna in 1980, and at the University of Zagreb in 1973, 1977, and 1988. He was also a visiting research professor at UNAM in Mexico City in 1986, 1988 and 1990.

A long-time associate of the late American socialist leader Michael Harrington, Denitch is a co-founder and an honorary chairman of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). He has had a close relationship with the Swedish Social Democratic Party and the Mexican Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), and has served as DSA’s representative to the Socialist International. He was a founder in 1983 and chair of the Socialist Scholars Conference, held annually in New York City, until controversy over his leadership led to its suspension and demise in 2005.

In 1991 he created the NGO Transition to Democracy (T.o.D.), which works in the successor states of Yugoslavia for human rights and against nationalism. Since 1991 he has organized an annual conference, the School on Democracy and Social Justice, for human rights activists from these states. He helped found two democratic socialist parties (now defunct) in Croatia in the 1990s, the Social Democratic Union and Social Democratic Action. Denitch serves on the editorial board of the journal Dissent, and is a sponsor of the journal New Politics. He is also a member of the Advisory board of Novi Plamen magazine.

Denitch lived in New York City from 1969 until his retirement. Currently he spends four months of the year in New York, the other eight months in the former Yugoslavia, where he maintains a home on the island of Brač in Croatia. He is married and has an adult daughter. His autobiography is in preparation.

Books authored:

  • Opinion-Making Elites in Yugoslavia. Co-authored with Allen H. Barton and Charles Kadushin (Praeger, 1973). ISBN 978-0-275-28692-7
  • The Legitimation of a Revolution: The Yugoslav case (Yale University Press, 1976).
  • Society and Social Change in Eastern Europe (Cliff Notes, 1978). ISBN 978-0-8220-1915-2
  • Legitimation of Regimes: International Frameworks for Analysis (Sage Publications, 1979). ISBN 978-0-8039-9898-8
  • Democratic Socialism: The Mass Left in Advanced Industrial Societies (Allanheld, Osmun, 1981).
  • A New Foreign and Defense Policy for the United States (Rowman and Littlefield, 1988). ISBN 978-0-8220-1915-2
  • The End of the Cold War: European Unity, Socialism, and the Shift in Global Power (University of Minnesota Press, 1990). ISBN 978-0-8166-1875-0
  • Limits and Possibilities: The Crisis of Yugoslav Socialism and State Socialist Systems (University of Minnesota Press, 1990). ISBN 978-0-8166-1844-6
  • The Socialist Debate: Beyond Red and Green (Pluto Press, 1990). ISBN 978-0-7453-0381-9
  • After the Flood: World Politics and Democracy in the Wake of Communism (Wesleyan, 1992). ISBN 978-0-8195-6256-2
  • Ethnic Nationalism: The Tragic Death of Yugoslavia (University of Minnesota Press, 1994). ISBN 978-0-8166-2458-4

Certain of Denitch's books have been translated into French, German, Swedish, Spanish, Slovenian and Serbo-Croat.

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People Directory

Chris O. Divich

Major General Chris O. Divich is commander of the Air Force Military Training Center, Lackland Air Force Base, Texas. A major component of the Air Training Command, the center is responsible for commissioning high-quality second lieutenants through the Officer Training School; conducting basic military training for all personnel entering the Air Force, Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard; providing technical training in nearly 100 courses; and providing English language training for foreign military personnel.

General Divich was born in Doland, S.D., in 1934, where he graduated from high school in 1952. He graduated from the University of Kansas in 1956 with a bachelor of science degree in education and received his commission through the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps program. He completed Squadron Officer School in 1960, Air Command and Staff College in 1967 and the Industrial College of the Armed Forces in 1976.

He entered the U.S. Air Force in September 1956 and in January 1958 completed pilot training at Reese Air Force Base, Texas. He served as a KC-97 pilot, aircraft commander and instructor pilot at Schilling Air Force Base, Kan., from March 1958 to October 1963. The general was then assigned to Dow Air Force Base, Maine, as a KC-135 commander and, later, standardization and evaluation pilot.

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Publishing

On Divine Philanthropy

From Plato to John Chrysostom

by Bishop Danilo Krstic

This book describes the use of the notion of divine philanthropy from its first appearance in Aeschylos and Plato to the highly polyvalent use of it by John Chrysostom. Each page is marked by meticulous scholarship and great insight, lucidity of thought and expression. Bishop Danilo’s principal methodology in examining Chrysostom is a philological analysis of his works in order to grasp all the semantic shades of the concept of philanthropia throughout his vast literary output. The author overviews the observable development of the concept of philanthropia in a research that encompasses nearly seven centuries of literary sources. Peculiar theological connotations are studied in the uses of divine philanthropia both in the classical development from Aeschylos via Plutarch down to Libanius, Themistius of Byzantium and the Emperor Julian, as well as in the biblical development, especially from Philo and the New Testament through Origen and the Cappadocians to Chrysostom.

With this book, the author invites us to re-read Chrysostom’s golden pages on the ineffable philanthropy of God. "There is a modern ring in Chrysostom’s attempt to prove that we are loved—no matter who and where we are—and even infinitely loved, since our Friend and Lover is the infinite Triune God."

The victory of Chrysostom’s use of philanthropia meant the affirmation of ecclesial culture even at the level of Graeco-Roman culture. May we witness the same reality today in the modern techno-scientific world in which we live.