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Morris Edward Opler
Morris Edward Opler (May 16, 1907 – May 13, 1996), American anthropologist and advocate of Japanese American civil rights, was born in Buffalo, New York. He was the brother of Marvin Opler, an anthropologist and social psychiatrist.
Opler's chief anthropological contribution is in the ethnography of Southern Athabaskan peoples, i.e. the Navajo and Apache, such as the Chiricahua, Mescalero, Lipan, and Jicarilla. His classic work is An Apache Life-Way (1941). He worked with Grenville Goodwin, who was also studying social organization among the Western Apache. After Goodwin's early death, Opler edited a volume of his letters from the field and other papers, published in 1973.
Opler earned his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1933. He taught at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, and the Claremont Colleges in Claremont, California, during the 1940s[1] and later taught at Cornell University and the University of Oklahoma.
During World War II, Opler worked as a community analyst at the Manzanar concentration camp, documenting conditions in camp and the daily lives of its Japanese American inmates. Arriving in 1943, he was sympathetic toward the displaced Japanese Americans and frequently butt heads with camp administrators, covering the so-called "Manzanar Riot" and resistance to the unpopular "loyalty questionnaire" and conscription of men from camp.[2]
He also aided the defense of Gordon Hirabayashi and Fred Korematsu in their (unsuccessful) cases challenging the legality of the exclusion of Japanese Americans from the West Coast, writing an amicus brief for each case that argued the military necessity cited by Western Defense Command head John L. DeWitt was in fact based "on racial grounds."[2]
In his published works, he challenged the way American public schools teach about Japanese Americans, and fought to improve the way they were viewed by Americans.[3]
^"Guide to the Morris Edward Opler papers, 1818-1997". Cornell University Library. Cornell University. Retrieved 13 February 2021.
MorrisEdwardOpler (May 16, 1907 – May 13, 1996), American anthropologist and advocate of Japanese American civil rights, was born in Buffalo, New York...
Opler (June 13, 1914 in Buffalo, New York – January 3, 1981) was an American anthropologist and social psychiatrist. His brother MorrisEdwardOpler was...
1938. Sapir consulted with Alice Vanderbilt Morris to develop the research program of IALA. Sapir, Edward (1907). Herder's "Ursprung der Sprache". Chicago:...
Parliament, House of Commons, HMSO 1866 Indian Village, S. C. Dube, MorrisEdwardOpler, Routledge, 2003, pp. 45 The Landed Gentry of the Telangana, Andhra...
Margaret Mead (1960) Gordon Willey (1961) Sherwood Washburn (1962) MorrisEdwardOpler (1963) Leslie White (1964) Alexander Spoehr (1965) John P. Gillin...
significant students were A. L. Kroeber, Alexander Goldenweiser, Ruth Benedict, Edward Sapir, Margaret Mead, Zora Neale Hurston, and Gilberto Freyre. Boas was...
and Ethnology 4:6. Kroeber, Alfred Louis; Waterman, Thomas Talbot; Sapir, Edward; Sparkman, Philip Stedman (January–March 1908). "Notes on California folk-lore"...
Philadelphia but raised in nearby Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Her father, Edward Sherwood Mead, was a professor of finance at the Wharton School of the University...
USA. 1942-04-06. p. 2. Retrieved 2022-10-23 – via newspapers.com. "Wright Morris". Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona. Retrieved 2022-10-23...
Margaret Mead, with whom she shared a romantic relationship, and Marvin Opler were among her students and colleagues. Benedict was president of the American...
Margaret Mead (1960) Gordon R Willey (1961) Sherwood L. Washburn (1962) Morris E. Opler (1963) Leslie A. White (1964) Alexander Spoehr (1965) John P. Gillin...
anthropology. In 1931, Yale established an anthropology department and hired Edward Sapir as the chairman. Murdock's sociological and positivist approach to...
Margaret Mead (1960) Gordon Willey (1961) Sherwood Washburn (1962) MorrisEdwardOpler (1963) Leslie White (1964) Alexander Spoehr (1965) John P. Gillin...
on to become important anthropologists, such as Clyde Kluckhohn, Marvin Opler, Philleo Nash, and Sol Tax. Up to this point, Linton had been primarily...
the term in anthropology was established with the publication of MorrisEdwardOpler's 1941 study An Apache Life-Way: The Economic, Social, and Religious...
number of linguists, anthropologists and sociologists; notably Franz Boas, Edward Sapir and Harry Hoijer of the Americanist Tradition; Roman Jakobson and...
supported cultural evolution as defined by writers such as Lewis. H Morgan and Edward Tylor. White's interests were diverse, and he took classes in several other...
Margaret Mead (1960) Gordon Willey (1961) Sherwood Washburn (1962) MorrisEdwardOpler (1963) Leslie White (1964) Alexander Spoehr (1965) John P. Gillin...
Margaret Mead (1960) Gordon Willey (1961) Sherwood Washburn (1962) MorrisEdwardOpler (1963) Leslie White (1964) Alexander Spoehr (1965) John P. Gillin...
Margaret Mead (1960) Gordon Willey (1961) Sherwood Washburn (1962) MorrisEdwardOpler (1963) Leslie White (1964) Alexander Spoehr (1965) John P. Gillin...
research.” In 1926, Jenness succeeded Canada's first Chief Anthropologist, Dr. Edward Sapir, as Chief of Anthropology at the National Museum of Canada, a position...
Margaret Mead (1960) Gordon Willey (1961) Sherwood Washburn (1962) MorrisEdwardOpler (1963) Leslie White (1964) Alexander Spoehr (1965) John P. Gillin...
Margaret Mead (1960) Gordon Willey (1961) Sherwood Washburn (1962) MorrisEdwardOpler (1963) Leslie White (1964) Alexander Spoehr (1965) John P. Gillin...
Margaret Mead (1960) Gordon Willey (1961) Sherwood Washburn (1962) MorrisEdwardOpler (1963) Leslie White (1964) Alexander Spoehr (1965) John P. Gillin...
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