Word: secularize
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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ALGIERS: Bloodied by an Islamic rebellion against the secular government of Algeria, holidays there are a time to kill. More than 1,000 people have died in here since the Dec. 30 start of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month. And even as the Algerian government adamantly nixed a U.S. call for an international inquiry, reports surfaced Wednesday that 27 more people had been killed...
While it is true that for many Americans, Christmas is not a particularly religious time, and it is true that Harvard's houses go through pains to make the Christmas trees that adorn them seem secular (there are no crosses on the trees or nativity scenes beneath them), it is equally true that for many in America and for even more, Proportionately, at Harvard, Christmas is not a part of their family's or their religion's collective set of experiences and traditions...
Instead, they expose the implicit and explicit ways majorities, even in the best intentioned places, endow their traditions with universal acceptance and shield them under the guise of secular neutrality...
Although Buckley represents an extreme slant that not many, at least not many at Harvard, would be comfortable championing, the logic of his stance supports the decision to place Christmas symbols in the public spaces of this secular University. Given that Christmas trees are inherently Christian symbols, intimately linked to Christmas, the celebration of the birth of Jesus, it is impossible to claim their neutrality. Therefore, in order to justify placing Christmas trees, as the sole symbol of the winter holidays, in the dining halls, one would need to believe that the majority culture has the singular right to representation...
...lawyer Whitehead got for Jones is Donovan Campbell, a Dallas attorney who has argued other cases for the institute and was a leader in a successful fight 12 years ago to reinstate the Texas law making sodomy a crime. In the Jones case, Campbell is pursuing a distinctly secular legal strategy. He says he plans to make Clinton's relations with women a key issue. He started raking those coals last week, taking the deposition of Gennifer Flowers, who claimed in 1992 to have had a 12-year affair with Clinton...