Name Jack Porter Role Writer | ||
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Books The Genocidal Mind: Soc, Is Sociology Dead?: S, The Jew as Outsider: Historical, Jewish Partisans of the Sov, Confronting History and Holocaus | ||
Education Northwestern University | ||
Jack Nusan Porter is an American writer, sociologist, human rights, and social 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. He is presently (2017-2020) a research associate at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University, doing research on Israeli-Russian relations, especially the life of Golda Meir, as well as doing work on mathematical and statistical models to predict genocide and terrorism and modes of resistance to genocide. His most recent books are 'Is Sociology Dead?', 'Social Theory and Social Praxis in a Post-Modern Age', 'The Genocidal Mind', 'The Jew as Outsider', and 'Confronting History and Holocaust'.
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Biography
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.
Growing up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Porter attended Washington High School and was active in Habonim Dror, a Labor Zionist Youth movement. He left for Israel soon after high school and worked on Kibbutz Gesher Haziv and studied in Jerusalem at the Machon L'Madrechei m'Chutz L'Aretz (a youth leaders institute). Porter eventually returned to Wisconsin and attended the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee from 1963-1967, majoring in sociology and Hebrew Studies. Going for the Ph.D. in sociology, he was accepted in 1967 to Northwestern University, studying under Howard S. Becker, Bernie Beck, Janet Abu-Lughod, and Charles Moskos. In the late 1960s, Porter was an active leader in the moderate wing of Students for a Democratic Society. However, in response to the growing anti-Zionism emanating from the black and white leftist movements, Porter and other students at Northwestern founded in 1970 the activist Jewish Student Movement, a forerunner to all Jewish “renewal” groups and predecessor to Michael Lerner’s Tikkun movement.
In the 1980s, Porter founded The Spencer Institute For Business and Society; a new age think tank. Also incorporated into the Spencer Institute For Business and Society was the Ahimsa Project. He also set up the Spencer School of Real Estate in 1983 and became a real estate developer, building housing in Roxbury, Massachusetts.
In his mid-fifties, in mid-life, Porter was ordained a rabbi by an Orthodox Vaad in New York City in 2001, attending the trans-denominational Academy for Jewish Religion in Manhattan in the late 1990s; after which he served congregations in Marlboro and Chelsea, Massachusetts and most notably in Key West, Florida, where he led a controversial Jewish outreach program to native Key Westers known as “Conchs”, northeastern U.S. “Snowbirds”, Miami’s Jewish, Cuban, and intermarried “Jewban” populations, transvestites, gay and lesbian parishioners.
In the spring of 2012 Porter ran for U.S Congress for the 4th Congressional seat in Massachusetts against Joseph Kennedy III. His run for office was mentioned in a profile in a New Yorker article, April 9, 2012, "Talk of the Town: The campaign Trail: Write-In", pp. 23–24.
In 2015, Porter was nominated for a Nobel Peace prize for his work on genocide, especially sexual and gender aspects of genocide, resistance to genocide, and denial of genocide as well as for his work fighting for the human rights of Kurds, Armenians, and Palestinians.