Jack Nusan Porter


Jack Nusan Porter 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

Nusia Jakub Puchtik was born December 2, 1944, in Rovno, Ukraine, to Jewish-Ukrainian partisan parents Fayge and Israel Puchtik. The family emigrated to the United States on June 20, 1946, and their name was Anglicized to Porter.
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.
Research topics included: 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.

Career

In 1976, Porter founded the Journal of the History of Sociology; it published its first issue in 1978.
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. 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 [United States House of Representatives elections in Massachusetts|2012 general election].

Selected works

Porter's books include:Student Protest and the Technocratic Society: The Case of ROTC Jewish Radicalism
  • The Sociology of American Jews
  • The Jew as Outsider
  • Jewish Partisans: A Documentary of Jewish Resistance in the Soviet Union During World War II
  • Conflict and Conflict Resolution: An Historical Bibliography
  • Genocide and Human Rights: A Global Anthology
  • Confronting History and Holocaust
  • Sexual Politics in the Third Reich: The Persecution of the Homosexuals During the Holocaust
  • The Sociology of Genocide: A Curriculum Guide
  • The Sociology of Jewry: A Curriculum Guide
  • Women in Chains: On the Agunah
  • The Genocidal Mind: Sociological and Sexual Perspectives
  • Is Sociology Dead? Social Theory and Social Praxis in a Post-Modern Age
  • Sexual Politics in Nazi Germany: The Persecution of the Homosexuals and Lesbians During the Holocaust
  • The Radical Writings of Jack Nusan Porter
  • Jewish Partisans of the Soviet Union During World War II
  • Can Mathematical Models Predict Genocide?
  • Can Mathematical Models Predict Terrorist Acts?
  • The Wit and Wisdom of Erich Goldhagen on Hitler, Nazism, the Holocaust and Other Genocides
  • If Only You Could Bottle It: Memoirs of a Radical Son
  • ''L'Matara : Jewish Partisan Poetry and Prose from the DP Camps of Europe''

Awards